The One

I teach about 90 juniors a year. Ten or fifteen of them will, in the first month of school, identify themselves as troubled. Academically, emotionally, cognitively, what have you. Students who won’t turn in work, won’t study, or won’t shut up or stay awake in class. About seven of those fifteen will leave: change schools, […]

Avoidance

Some of the most painful things that ever happened to me happened in childhood. One day after school, I sat in the car with my mom, facing the tree in our side yard, and crying and crying and telling her I was never going back to school. I had no friends. My only friend, in […]

Last

What protects you, at the end of the school year, is that you are so tired. My first few years, I was frustrated by how dead and hollow I felt. I wanted to feel sad to lose that group of kids, but they were like ghosts to me in the last weeks of school. Or […]

Alarms

This year, at the senior banquet, I got the first shout-out. I don’t like being the center of attention, so I was both pleased and embarrassed. What does the graduating senior say of me, after two years in my class? “I remember Ms Schurman always used to say, ‘Wake up!” The purpose of education is, […]