Courage

I have a feeling that now that I have started adding teaching stories to this blog, most will be slightly pessimistic because, let's be honest, the funniest things usually have to do with student oddness and misbehavior. So I have to just give a nod today to a student I don't ever want to forget. She is attractive, smart, and well-spoken. She turns in all her work in time and is always on task. But that is not what impresses me. This student could pick any partner in the class to work with on projects but she always picks the struggling kid, the kid that gets made fun of, the kid that skips every-other class and smells like smoke, the kid who wears the same clothes every day, or the kid who has never seen an A or B in his life because he just doesn't get it. She seeks them out and supports and befriends them in this perfectly mild and unassuming way. I want to be just like that. I can still remember peers who could have used a friend during my school years and I just never had the courage.