by Tim Breault

Created on: June 25, 2007

I stood at the door of what used to be my classroom. With a box underneath my arm, I panned my eyes around the room. It seemed empty, too empty. I kept thinking of the kids as they sat in their seats, talking to each other, and me. The discussion we had, and the learning we did. The fun I tried to have with them while trying to teach them. I kept thinking these were my students, my kids, and what they meant to me while standing there.

I remember the day John decided to open up. He didn't talk much in class, but when he started to do his writings (about half way in the semester), everything poured from him. He told me about his life, his family, his job, the football team, everything. His writings were so vivid that sometimes I could picture myself being there. It was incredible, and I asked him what made him open up, and he told me he had nothing to lose, which always puzzled me, until today. He came in between periods and told me that he always felt like I took him seriously, which made him feel comfortable to write. I am glad I could give that to him.

I also found the worst in my job, too. I felt like all of these students were more than just my students sometimes, but my own kids for the forty-five minutes that I had them. This feeling was never so prevalent then when we were sharing our writings one day. I had a student named Sherrie, and she was giving her autobiography. She was telling me about how close she was to her grandmother until the day she died, and her mom going from boyfriend to boyfriend, and the last boyfriend her mom had raped her when she was fourteen. She was fifteen when I had her in the classroom. It broke my heart when I heard her saying this, and I had a feeling of hatred for this man. I wondered if this was the same feeling a father would have towards a guy who would do this to his daughter. When she got to that part of the autobiography, I could see the tears streaming down her face. She was choked up as she came to this part of her writing, and after saying it, she went running out of the room. The classroom was dead silent. I told the students to look over their writings while I went out to find her. She was around the corner, sobbing. I put my hand on her shoulder (yeah, I know, a violation of the student/teacher rules, but I didn't care), and she buried her head into my chest and cried. I told her how brave she was to say something like that in front of her peers, and it was something that I couldn't do, which I think is true to

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