School choir performs concert at home of teacher battling terminal cancer

— -- Larry Jackson, a substitute teacher at an Oklahoma middle school, is known and beloved for the words of wisdom he imparts to his students.

But, when a group of his students arrived at his home to perform a concert on his front lawn, Jackson, who has terminal cancer, was left nearly speechless.

The students, members of the show choir at Heartland Middle School in Edmond, Oklahoma, visited Jackson’s home Tuesday, a few weeks after he was forced to stop teaching due to his illness. Jackson, 68, who was also a truck driver, is battling both cancer and congestive heart failure.

"It made him very, very happy," Jackson’s wife, Pat Jackson, told ABC News about the concert that included inspirational songs like "Fight Song” by Rachel Platten.

"He misses those kids a lot," she said. "He’d give anything to be able to go back to teaching."

Jackson, a father of two, was a regular substitute teacher at the public school of nearly 900 students, which opened this year. His words of wisdom to students were so well-known that Jackson’s fellow teachers created a video series, “Conversations With Mr. Jackson,” that features Jackson speaking on topics like respect and encouragement.

A school official called the videos a "time capsule" in which Jackson’s "words of wisdom will live on beyond his time."

The seventh-grade principal at Heartland, Gabe Schmidt, told ABC News how the idea for the front-lawn concert originated.

"I went to the teachers and said, 'Now that he’s done that for us and since he can’t be here, let’s figure out a way to go to his house with students,'" he said. "We wanted to give back to him."

During the concert, the students were "champions" while the adults struggled to hold back their emotions, according to Schmidt.

The concert led to conversations with the students about joy and mortality.

“We worked together with the students to address the tougher topics," Schmidt said. "To be there with someone who is suffering, but his joy is overwhelming enough that it pours over into other people’s lives -- having to wrestle through that thought process."

Jackson last taught at Heartland on Feb. 28. His cancer has now spread throughout his body, according to his wife, who provided chocolate chip cookies and bottled water for the students Tuesday.

"Larry loves them very much and he misses them," Pat Jackson said of the Heartland students. "He misses them every day."