One of the 130 handwritten notes Brittni Darras sent to her students 
 
 English teacher Brittni Darras had a special gift for each of her students at Rampart High School after they finished finals this week: a personalized, handwritten thank you note. 
 
 She hadn't been planning to write them, but then something powerful occurred during parent teacher conferences. 
 
 A mother of a student who'd been absent for a few weeks came in carrying a list of teachers' names. Next to each teacher's name was the word "yes" or the word "no." 
 
 "She had asked her daughter if she felt comfortable sharing the story and sharing why she'd been absent. That was the 'yes' and the 'no.' Teachers that you can tell, and teachers that you probably shouldn't say something to," Darras said. "My name had a “yes” next to it, so she proceeded to explain to me the reason for her daughter’s extended absence." 
 
 The student's mother told Darras that police had stopped her daughter in the act of committing suicide. Police had received a tip through the Safe2Tell app that the student had deleted all of her social media accounts and even left goodbye letters. 
 
 "We were both in tears, and it just made me realize that something needs to be done to make these kids realize that they're special," Darras said. 
 
 She asked the mother for permission to write a personalized letter to her daughter and she agreed. Darras said it was the girl's reaction that motivated her take things further. 
 
 "She couldn't believe that somebody would say such kind things about her and that she honestly thought that if she was gone...that it wasn't going to make a difference," Darras said. 
 
 So, Darras went to work handwriting personal letters to all 130 of her students. She even put off grading essays to get it all done in time. 
 
 Bree Wuthier was one of the students who got a letter after finishing finals. Darras' message starts, "Bree, you are the student I brag about to all of my friends." 
 
 "I was just first of all surprised by how much she wrote," Wuthier said. "Usually when people write letters, it's like one or two sentences, like either 'Happy Birthday,' or 'Merry Christmas,' or 'I hope you're doing fine.'" 
 
 At the time, Darras didn't tell her students why she'd written the letters. Instead she wrote a Facebook post with the back story. Her post went viral. 
 
 Wuthier said Ms. Darras' words showed how intimately she knows each of her students. 
 
 "It was just incredible. She has such an eye, like to see things and to actually listen to her students," Wuthier said. 
 
 Darras' post has been shared more than 85,000 times. She's received messages of encouragement and support from friends and strangers all across the country. Her story serves as proof that a pen, paper, and some genuine words of kindness can still be powerful. ||||| Starting in 1996, Alexa Internet has been donating their crawl data to the Internet Archive. Flowing in every day, these data are added to the Wayback Machine after an embargo period.
– When finals wrapped up at Rampart High School in Colorado Springs last week, Brittni Darras handed each of her students a handwritten letter. They contained messages like, "I hope you know how special you are to me" and "You inspire me to be a better person." It was a sweet gesture inspired by a tragic event. Two months ago, a parent explained to Darras why her daughter had been absent from class for weeks. "Her daughter—a friendly, intelligent, beautiful, driven, young woman—not only planned to commit suicide, but was in the act of doing so when the police ... broke in, and stopped her. She had deleted her social media accounts and left goodbye letters; she was ready to leave the world," Darras writes in a Facebook post, per the Telegraph. "Feeling helpless, I asked if I could write my student a letter to be delivered to her at the hospital." When the letter had been delivered, the girl's mom told Darras that her daughter had been surprised by the kind things her teacher wrote about her, believing no one would miss her if she died. "It just made me realize that something needs to be done to make these kids realize that they're special," Darras tells KOAA. She spent the next two months writing a note to each of her 130 students. "I was just first of all surprised by how much she wrote," says a student whom Darras described as "the student I brag about to all of my friends." "Usually when people write letters, it's like one or two sentences ... It was just incredible." Darras' Facebook post has now been shared more than 173,000 times, with commenters offering Darras their own words of praise. (These students wrote "heartbreaking" letters to their teacher.)