Why I teach

I haven't posted all week because grades were due and I was frantically trying to grade essays.

But the most exciting thing happened, the reason I put up with all the students who cuss at me and threaten me and don't care. I have a student who's had a really rough life up to now and has gotten in tons of trouble, and recently decided it wasn't worth it. He's really smart, but has a lot of bad decisions to make up for if he wants to go to college. The problem, I discovered this week, is that he never planned to go to college. He never thought he could. He said he just figured he'd graduate high school and get a regular job and that would be it.

But he also started asking questions about writing and publishing stories. After talking to him long enough, I recognized the signs of a truly gifted writer. I haven't read a story by him yet, but the way he sees the world, a way he thought was really weird, is exactly how writers view everything. He changes details of his life to make a better story, he thinks about how a short story would be better if events were different, and he can imagine what botht he villain and the hero are thinking.

So I told him to read Salinger's Nine Stories and write me a story. I'm going to read it and critique it and essentially hold a separate class with him. He's already failed this English class enough times that he's read all the books, so he might as well learn something new.

According to this boy, nobody ever told him he could be a writer before. Nobody ever told him he could be anything. He kept asking me why I cared so much, which made me sad and happy at the same time.

But the best part is, he loves coming to my class and sees a new reason to keep his grades up: he might go to college and become a writer.