A Texas teacher went above and beyond — in the sweetest way — recently for one of her pre-kindergarten students.
It all started when 4-year-old August arrived at Lakeview Elementary in Sugar Land with her hair in cornrows, beads and a little bun.
“Her hair was just really, really cute. So I told her, ‘Oh my goodness … I know exactly what I’m doing to my hair. I told her I was gonna do it just like hers,” her teacher, Leigha Bishop, 29, tells PEOPLE, noting that August didn’t believe her. “She looked at me and rolled her eyes like, ‘yeah right!’ ”
That night, Bishop kept her promise, fashioning her hair just like the little girl’s. And the next day, Jan. 30, the devoted teacher couldn’t wait to show August her new ‘do.
“She stepped out of the car and her jaw dropped,” Bishop says. “I was like, ‘I told you I like your hair! So we’re gonna be cute together.’ ”
Throughout the day, August was nearly speechless, often blushing when Bishop would call on her in class.
“She was shocked. She just didn’t know what to say,” Bishop tells PEOPLE of August. “She was pretty quiet the whole day, which wasn’t really like her. All the kids were like, ‘Ms. Bishop’s hair is just like yours!’ ”
With August’s parents’ permission, Bishop shared a photo of the twinning moment online, and it quickly made its way around the Internet. The picture amassed more than 16,000 likes on Facebook and more than 2,000 retweets on Twitter.
Bishop says that August doesn’t really understand all the attention right now, but “over time when she gets older, she’ll understand that Ms. Bishop really … cared about me for me,” the teacher says.
“It’s beyond a picture. It’s beyond hair. It’s more of me wanting her to love herself first, so that everything else she does will be what it needs to be,” she says. I just wanted her to know that I see her,” Bishop says of August.
“It’s a connection on a teacher to student level. There are teachers who care about their students. They push them to be better students and make them feel loved and beautiful.”