As a personal side note, I have been teaching Japanese at the college level for 14 years and have had over 200 students at this point. I have kept in touch with many, but not all. I see some who have truly become or are at least on their way to being considered highly proficient living in Japan. Some lived for several years in Japan or other countries and are reconnecting with me. Others chose not to pursue the language further, but are sharing their love of the language and culture with young people in their sphere of influence.
I came to the teaching profession after having another career so I may be older than many new MAFLT graduates. We do not know the number of days we have nor all the people we will impact in our daily lives. It is my hope that by helping my students develop their language vision and motivation, their mark will be made upon the world, and in turn influence young people as they once were. Like the parent in Kahlil Gibran's poem "On Children" a language teacher can be like a bow that affects the flight of their students towards a future we will not experience but will have influenced (emphasis mine).
Kahlil Gibran - 1883-1931
And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, Speak to us of Children.
And he said:
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.
From The Prophet (Knopf, 1923). This poem is in the public domain.