When I walked into the office at Rockwell Elementary a few weeks ago, I was met by my fourth grade math teacher, who was flipping through an old yearbook. She motioned me over and pointed at a picture.

“That’s you in kindergarten,” she said.

Running into past teachers is a hazard of covering education in a system I attended — my very first week of covering education I arrived at a group interview and found myself talking to my first grade teacher’s assistant. Once, I ended up at my high school and found myself flipping through my senior year book, which was sitting on the coffee table.

But it was the first time I’d been back to Rockwell, really, since taking over the beat in December. I made it down once to take some photos, but I missed the community school visit, and was never able to cover a few events I’d been told about.

Running into my old teachers is odd, but generally a pleasant surprise. Touring my old elementary school was eerie. Things overlap, and it’s hard to not relive memories. To borrow a phrase from the school’s new principal, Jennifer Warden: you see the past.

I was there to talk to Warden about her days as a student teacher at Rockwell — a story which is running in today’s education section. As it happens, our time at Rockwell overlapped — though I didn’t remember until it was pointed out to me.

Warden student taught while I was in first grade. Later, I attended classes on the same hall on which she taught.

It’s strange to think that sometimes, this is the way the world works. It’s stranger to take a tour of my old school with someone else who remembers what it used to be like.

The carpet in the upper-grade hall has been torn up, replaced with shiny linoleum. The walls are repainted white, with teal and purple stripes. In the 1990s, everything was beige. The mobile units are gone, or moved to the other side of the school, and the eight doors that were painted to resemble North Carolina lighthouses have been painted over.

I know it must have been stranger for Warden, who also attended Rockwell as a student. For her, the end of the upper-grade hallway is the former library.

We peeked into a room and she saw old bookshelves. I saw the tables and chairs of my fifth grade classroom. I was half afraid that if I blinked time would wind back, and it would be 1 p.m. on Sept. 11, 2001 — and we’d all be crowded in the back nook of the room with two other classes, listening to a reporter on the radio spin out a story that would change everything.

But some things hadn’t changed. The upper-grade hallway was still long enough that I was tempted to walk down it with exaggerated, giant steps. The hallway’s front door still has what appears to be a bullet hole in the glass, the same well still sits in front of the school, and, despite the passage of years, there is still one of the stepping stones, decorated with marbles and handprints, that one of my classes made for the front garden.

That’s what throws you off more than anything — the things that stay the same. After 15 years, I expected more differences than similarities. But they’re there, jarring, unexpected and welcomed.

And surprisingly, one of the things that hasn’t changed is the people. I figure if my first grade teacher assistant is still out there, floating around the district and a teacher in her own right, there must be others. I see them from time to time — in the audience at board meetings or in the hallways during larger events, with just enough time for a wave or a hug.

It’s a small, whimsical part of my job that I hope never stops. I just hope that they’ll leave the yearbooks at home.

Contact education reporter Rebecca Rider at 704-797-4264.