No matter who you are, you always want to go out on a high note.

It’s especially important if you’re ending a decades-long career in teaching. For one Georgia man, as he bid a fond farewell to the highschool he had worked at for more than 30 years, he knew he needed to find a way to say goodbye that honored all he had worked for. He asked for some former students to come and help him celebrate.

He expected 20. He got more than 100. And they all agreed to help their former choir and piano teacher to perform one final goodbye concert.

Jim Stanley and his former students spent only 1 day preparing for a concert they would put on at the Cartersville High School in Cartersville, Ga.

The love the students clearly felt for their former teacher helped a small TikTok video go viral, with more than 2 millions views. It hasn’t shown signs of slowing down, either. 

The video highlighted one of Stanley’s former soloists, Lisa Douglas, as she performed “A City Called Heaven,” by Josephine Poelinitz. Then, the video lands back on another student, Maggie Smith Kühn. The overlay text explains that these are Stanley’s former students.

Jim Stanley, playing piano, is retiring and had hoped some of his students would come back for a concert. More than 100 showed up.

“He asked 30 years of his alumni to come sing with him one last time before he retired,” Kühn explains in the video text.

We only had this one day of rehearsal before performing, but we all remembered his style. He changed our lives.”

Stanley talked to “Good Morning America” reporters, and explained that he had always wanted to see how his former students had fared, once they left highschool. 

@watchmaggiepaint Replying to @CoffeyKaffeine Here it is! Lisa Lowe Douglas performing “City Called Heaven” directed by Jim Stanley. #choralmusic #mrhollandsopus #inspiring #lisalowedouglas ♬ original sound – Watch Maggie Paint

“So many of the seniors after they graduate, you don’t see them again,” Stanley said. “And you always wondered, you know, ‘I wonder how adulthood looks like for them.’ So I thought this would just be a good opportunity to reconnect with a lot of those kids.”

But he said he had no idea that so many would remember him, and want to come back. From all across the United States, and even from Canaday, the students came pouring back, all to make sure Stanley had a proper send-off.

“Everybody’s sort of said this is the ‘Mr. Holland’s Opus’ moment and it totally was. It was overwhelming to walk into the rehearsal space and see all these kids from all the way from 1996 up until 2022. It was wild,” Stanley said.

“I choked up a little bit. But I tried to keep the tears from flowing,” he added.

It was definitely an emotional day for me and I think for a lot of the kids too. We were all in a happy place.”

The beloved teacher said all he hopes is that he made a difference in his students’ lives.

“One of the things that I wanted to do was to be able to give my students some music-defining experiences, like music has defined my life. So hopefully I’ve accomplished that,” Stanley said.

Stanley and his students on stage for his final performance.

It’s apparent the teacher will always be remembered. “It was so emotional. So many memories flooded back, we had the strongest choral program of a town our size, all because of Stanley,” Kuhn said. “Many of us became artists and musicians professionally.”

To honor Stanley, the former students have started a scholarship fund in his name to help support people who want to teach music.

“If there was one message or one thing that could come out of any of this, even though I’m retiring at this point, [it’s that] music can change students’ lives,” Stanley said.

Watch the amazing performance below!

Sources: Good Morning America | Fox 5 Atlanta