An Arkansas teacher has adopted the seven-year-old foster student who burst into her second-grade classroom singing her own name.
Lexi McClelland, 29, met Mary in 2021 at Elm Tree Elementary in Bentonville. McClelland was 24 and in her first years of teaching. Mary had already lived in six foster homes.
“She was naturally funny and incredibly creative,” McClelland told TODAY. “She loved reading, and she had these little comments that felt wise beyond her years.”
Mary had entered the foster care system because of parental substance abuse and neglect. Inside the classroom, she designed an imaginary trolley to deliver library books across the room and chatted to anyone who would listen.
McClelland felt a pull from that first morning that she has stopped trying to explain.
“It felt like God led it,” she told TODAY. “Like she was meant to be in my life.”
McClelland and her husband had been talking about doing more for Mary. Then a plan for another family to adopt her fell through.
The couple was eligible to take Mary in via kinship placement, a route open to teachers and other adults already in a child’s life. They worked through foster care licensing. Mary moved in. The adoption followed.
Mary is now nine. The story has drawn comparisons to a real-life Matilda, with TODAY first reporting the adoption in March.
Asked how she explains it now, McClelland gives the same answer she gave that first morning. “Like she was meant to be in my life.”
