Thanksgiving was a momentous occasion at school. Our school's tradition is to have everyone bring in what they can and we host a feast in our advisories. There, we ask the students to say one thing that they are thankful for. It's one of those rare, meaningful days because inevitably a student says that even though most of the time she thinks that the teachers are "wack" and that the school is stupid, she doesn't mean to be so "mean to yas all the time and really you people are" her real family. There were multiple sets of liquid eyes. Seniors were coming around begging for letters of recommendation and it was exciting to think that maybe, just maybe a decent percentage of these "ghetto" children would not only break the cycle of poverty by being the first in their families to graduate fro high school, but also be the first to be admitted to college. Whether or not they are capable or able to withstand the full four years (or two for more technical programs) of college is anyone's guess. I don't think we can hold ourselves responsible for any of this. We can only cross our fingers and hope for the best. I had several students come to tell me that they missed my class and that they might not have told me at the time, but that in my class, they learned a lot, in fact, they learned how to think and to write. They miss my laughter and my sensitivity. Now, how's that for rewarding? My response of course (after regaining my composure) was to say, "but all you ever did was complain and tell me how boring and terrible I was?" To which one student replied, "I'm a teenager, Miss." Fair enough.

These rewarding moments seem to be timed so as to appear before vacations, as though to seduce us to return. Of course, the re-adjustment to work is always chaotic as the kids have lost their routines and seem to want to punish us for leaving them. Or perhaps we are out of touch with the level of stress that we've adjusted to most of the time. We've remembered our true selves, read a novel for fun, enjoyed the New York Times and the New Yorker magazine, maybe even gone to a movie or two. We're unprepared for the swarming of complaints, the shower of nasty words, the filth of the dust, the invisibility of the ghetto is so quick to re-appear when you have no choice but to visit.
The love/hate balance is back in place I suppose.