Friends, family mourning Granger Middle School teacher

Granger Middle School teacher Emily Wagner was a voracious reader with a passion for words who took great pride in expanding the vocabulary of her students.

Those who knew her best say it was sadly ironic the 30-year-old language arts teacher eventually succumbed to a form of cancer so rare, even her doctors had to look it up.

Wagner died May 27 after a nine-month battle with Cholangiocarcinoma, a rare form of bile duct cancer that affects about 2,000 Americans each year.

After being diagnosed in August, she began treatment at the University of Chicago Medical Research Center. She continued to teach full time until her death.

During her battle, Wagner, who lived in Chicago, vowed to survive the school year and watch her students at the Aurora middle school get promoted to high school. And she almost made it.

Her mother, Sandy, said her daughter was so dedicated that she died while creating a third version of her final vocabulary test of the year.

"She was always two steps ahead of her students' wandering eyes because she always wrote four versions of her tests," Sandy Wagner said. "Even in her hospital bed and using most of her strength to sit up and breathe, Emily got through three versions but never got to the fourth."

That passion earned Wagner praise this week from people throughout Indian Prairie Unit District 204, including Superintendent Kathryn Birkett.

"She was diagnosed in August, coinciding with the beginning of the school year, and had chemotherapy on Fridays and was back teaching every Monday," Birkett said. "Emily was an extremely dedicated educator and set an example we could all emulate."

Before joining the district in 2006, the Des Moines, Iowa, native spent three years teaching middle school in Phoenix, Ariz., as part of the Teach for America program. But she jumped at the chance to move to Chicago when the Granger job opened.

"We have family in Wisconsin and we would go through Chicago to visit them occasionally and Emily fell in love with the city," her mother said. "She loved reading about the neighborhoods and then going and walking through them and taking pictures. She shared an amateur photography hobby with her father."

As eager as Wagner was to come to Illinois, Granger was equally eager to have her.

Her fellow team teacher and friend Glenda Gustafson remembered the day Wagner was hired.

"I was part of the team that Emily would be teaching in so the principal and I interviewed 19 candidates before we met Emily," she said. "As soon as we met her we immediately said yes. We had never seen anyone who knew the curriculum and had such a passion for reading and writing and sharing that with her students."

When not reading or teaching, Gustafson said Wagner loved to travel, shop and munch on tapas at her favorite restaurant, Meson Sabika in Naperville.

"Emily has read books by authors we haven't heard of and traveled to places we only see in magazines," Gustafson said. "She wanted to see and do it all."

Wagner was also planning a wedding with her fiance, Kevin Burt, who proposed to her in April.

"They both were preparing to make a future together while planning to beat the cancer into the past," her mother said. "It really is a sad scenario but he's been tremendous through it all."

Several friends and colleagues traveled to Des Moines Monday to attend a memorial service and another is planned for 10 a.m. June 19 in Granger's Memorial Garden, where a tree and statue will be placed in her memory.