Well, school has been out (a big hooray!) for half the summer (not a big hooray), but the end of the school year didn't come with a sigh of satisfaction. In fact, quite of bit of angst consumed me as I contemplated teaching another year and my enthusiasm to teach Romeo and Juliet during the last weeks after core testing was gone  Yes, I know, sounding a bit melodramatic. I wish it weren't true, and maybe it's still some residual hormone imbalance from a "mighty change," but nonetheless, the anxiety toward teaching school is there.

Just the Friday before the final week of school, three young men stayed after school (at my ushering) to get some work done so they could make a grade in English this quarter. These seemingly lax, apathetic boys ended up standing/sitting around in my cozy little 10 by 10 office for two hours telling me very difficult details about their lives that make school life, and life in general, hard. Really hard.

Crying at times, one boy, who has failed my class every quarter because he would just quit coming to school for weeks at a time, laid out his family story. Remorse and sorrow overcame me. All YEAR I had not bothered to ever really talk to him. When I could have been support, I was just one more face of consternation. I let his seemingly carefree-guy demeanor and school-doesn't-matter facade fool me into . Always a natural smile, as if his face muscles knew no other position.

The most amazing part of this was to see his sincerity and listen as he spoke from the most authentically kind heart I have ever sensed in a student. He couldn't answer what the word "connotation" means on 7 different tests (yes 7), but he sure knows how to control it in his speech. He was failing English every quarter, but his practical use of it was superior. (Of course, I changed his grade for the quarter and offered him some ways to easily make every other F up this summer.)

In his kind way, he told me that I was a good teacher, but kids are different now. I quote: "The level of strictness has lowered so much that if something happens, the kid won't be in trouble; the teacher will." Naturally, I asked him and the other boys to help me out with real live ways to change my classroom to be better teaching and learning for today's kids. And they did.

I have vowed that, even though I sometimes have past students tell me I was their best English teacher, I will give it one more year to try to adapt. If it doesn't work out, I'll be moving on. Now that I have medical benefits with Noni, the proposition to try an entrepreneurial venture isn't so daunting.