TAYLOR, Mich. – An elementary school teacher in Taylor welcomed a student back to school in a big way.
Little Roza Williams is going through cancer treatments and shaved her head, and her music teacher was so inspired by her strength that she shaved her head too.
When you meet Williams there are three things, she’ll make sure you know.
“I’m 9 years old and I’m in third grade. I’m happy because my teacher Ms. Anderson, she makes me feel beautiful with these headbands,” said Williams.
Her mom Meaghan Rapp will tell you Ms. Anderson, her daughter’s music teacher at Randall Elementary School, is all Williams talks about.
“The first week of school it was every day. I heard her constantly, ‘Oh, she walks into my class, she walks me from the bus, she makes me feel so beautiful,’” said Rapp.
Feeling beautiful has been a struggle for the 9-year-old. When she was four, she was diagnosed with stage four of neuroblastoma, beat it and was cancer-free for three years. The cancer came back recently.
“So far, we did four rounds of immunotherapy and we’re about to do surgery in October, which is honestly really scary because she didn’t have to have the surgery the first time around,” Rapp said.
Williams was nervous to return to school with a new look.
“Because I thought people make fun of me,” said Williams.
When Jayme Anderson found out she wanted to do something to help; she became the person she didn’t have when growing up.
“I didn’t want school to be her trauma like it was for me,” Anderson said.
The best way she knew how to do that was to shave her head.
“I made a video the week before just explaining to her what I was going to do and just to build her back up so she could walk through those doors the first day,” said Anderson. “Then I made a video of myself shaving my head the night before school.”
“It made me really happy to know that I’m not alone in the school,” said Williams.
“When I saw that video, I couldn’t help but cry. Like it was so touching and so inspiring,” said Williams’ mother, Rapp.
It’s a sweet reminder of the good in bad times.
“It shows me that is not just me, her and her family going against it. It’s a whole other community that’s going against it with her. And then she’s not alone. We’re not alone in it,” Rapp said.
Ms. Anderson says she doesn’t plan on growing her hair back soon. She wants to match Williams and then grow their hair back together.
For information on Team Roza, click here. If you would like to donate to help with medical expenses, click here.