A Texas teen has finally found a forever home after he convinced his English teacher to adopt him.
Anthony Berry, 16, did not want to be adopted until he met Bennie Berry a year ago.
In January, the teen from Beaumont, Texas, asked Berry to adopt him.
Berry, an English teacher at Pathways Learning Center in Beaumont, initially thought Anthony was making a joke when he said he wanted to show her a website, reported ABC News.
“Finish your assignment and then you can show me the website,” Berry told Anthony.
“Then later I found out that it was really an option to adopt him, so we pushed forward,” she said.
Anthony had been in foster care since the age of 9, and was really looking forward to the adoption, he said.
“I really couldn’t sleep last night,” Anthony told reporters, according to ABC. “How many kids my age get adopted nowadays?”
Berry was also elated at the prospect of becoming a first-time mom.
“I have a son. I’m more than elated,” she said, according to ABC. “I have a son for the rest of my life.”
On Nov. 17, Anthony became the oldest child in Jefferson County to be adopted, reported ABC affiliate KBMT.
November is national adoption awareness month.
According to the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS), in the 2017 fiscal year, 5,395 children were adopted and 6,685 children are waiting for adoption in Texas as of September this year.
The number of children adopted in Texas grew by 34 percent over the last decade, however, there is still a critical need for adoptive parents for children of all ages, the DFPS says.
“No child should grow up in foster care or feeling unwanted,” DFPS Commissioner Hank Whitman said in a statement.
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