LOWELL | Lowell High School English teacher Amanda Blashill spent Monday teaching her freshman class vocabulary from Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet," wearing a white ribbon on her shirt and constantly checking her cell phone.

She had been at home grading papers three days prior to that when she received a phone call from her father. Her step-brother had a brain tumor. He would have surgery to remove it in two days.

"I didn't know how to wrap my head around it," Blashill said.

The night before her step-brother, Chris Chavez, a 16-year-old junior at Lowell High School, went into surgery at Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago, Blashill received another phone call from her father requesting she wear a ribbon for her brother.

"I told him I didn't know what to be for (Chavez). He told me to just be there for him," Blashill said.

In addition to her own ribbon, Blashill brought a few extras to school, figuring some of the other teachers might want to wear one. Before the end of the school day, she had to go buy another spool of white ribbon.

It all began when Chavez noticed problems with his peripheral vision. He went to his eye doctor, who told him he needed the MRI that revealed the brain tumor.

Blashill visited Chavez on Thursday and was pleased to see him sitting up and talking.

A surgeon removed the tumor and sent it to pathology for testing. Now the family is waiting -- with the support of the Lowell High School community -- for the results to figure out what comes next.

"So many people said, 'He's such a good person,'" Blashill said. "That's the kind of thing you hope people say when you're 70, not 16."