A prologue to possible anecdotes

Ha, I told you I was going to inundate you! If you have followed my blog through the ages, you will know that when it rains here, it pours.

Then it returns to a desert. (Sometimes.)

The flat kind with mountains tantalizing you in the distance.

Or maybe a graveyard with mysterious headstones.

But if you stick around, then the journey might get a little more interesting.

Now that I’ve overcome some inertia, I will say something. There’s still so much! Okay, deep breaths. I’ll start small.

I love my students.

Hhmm, still too big. Oh well.

I love, love, LOVE my students.

If you’re a teacher, you’ll understand. I didn’t until I started doing it. It’s kind of indescribable, but a student is like a beloved worm that finds a way to snuggle into your heart. And even if the student really is a worm, somehow you’re delighted anyway. After all, this worm is your student and he or she is already in your heart! 

That is clearly logical.

Anyway, I had nineteen students this past summer, 11 boys and 8 girls, ages roughly 12-17. And I love 

them.

Oh yeah. I said that already.

You should know something though: they weren’t actually that easy to love all the time. Sometimes they drove me crazy, and I’d start each day asking God to drive out the spirit of confusion from my classroom and to fill me with His love for them so that I could actually function well as a teacher. But that’s probably the story of every teacher, to an extent.

The prayers mostly worked.

If you let me, I could tell you anecdotes all day long about each of my students. But I should probably limit myself to one or two at a time. That way I won’t get overwhelmed and you won’t get too bored.

Hhmm.

“Where’s A?” I asked, after the break.

“He left, teacher. He said tell you he’s sick.”

“Really? Okay.”

Next day. “A, I’m so sorry to hear that you were sick!” My sincerity was enthusiastic. Too enthusiastic. 

Of course I suspected him; he had been missing the second half of class for awhile now. “I’m glad to see you feel better today.”

Nothing. Just grins.

During the break, he came up to me. “Teacher, I went to D---.” He named a large city about five hours away.

“Really? I don’t think so.”

“Teacher, I go with my brother.”

“Hhmm. D--- is a long way away.”

“Only four hours, Teacher! I go yesterday, I go today, and I go again tomorrow.”

“Really, A? You know what I think? I think you are smart. You think, ‘I am smart, I only need to come to half of class. I can take the test and still get a good grade!’” I pointed at his latest test I had given him to look at—he was regularly scoring 85-90%. “But if you came to all of class, you could be getting 100! But you don’t, because you don’t come to class. That’s very bad. Very bad.”

He didn’t answer me. He just smiled that fresh 16-year-old smile he’d been giving me almost every day and left during the break.

But the next day, he stayed all day. He came to all of class every day afterwards.