Nine

Leila was the type of person to take almost everything to heart. I always considered that one of her greatest strengths, but I wonder if it may have been a weakness, too. A devout young woman, she told me once that she prayed for each student in her homeroom, by name, every night. Maybe it was naive of me to think so, but it didn't seem that our religious differences divided us. I know that Leila genuinely liked and respected me, and I never felt judged by her.

The failings of our students were a different matter, though. Leila really struggled with the students who didn't do as they should. When kids don't do what they're "supposed" to do, there are only so many places a teacher can put the blame: Is it the students? Their parents? Or is it, somehow, you?

Once I was keeping a student from P.E because he hadn't done his work. I was frustrated, and he was furious, and he looked me dead in the eye, his own eyes bright with tears, and he shook his head and told me that it that didn't matter what I did, I couldn't make him do anything he didn't want to do, and at that moment, I understood he was right.

How different he was than I was when I was a kid: I did what I was asked because I was afraid to get in trouble. That wasn't the case with many of our students. I'll never forget the first time I called home and had a parent hang up on me, nor the first conference where I heard a parent say, "I don't know what to do; he just doesn't listen." Often we found ourselves in a losing game of escalating consequences.

Add all of that to the fact that we weren't the kind of teachers who threw candy bars at our students when they did what they should; we believed in intrinsic motivation and right for right's sake. We wanted our students and their parents to do what they should because it was the right thing to do, and when they didn't, it was maddening. We complained to each other and did our best to problem-solve, but at the end of the school day, I guess I just dismissed it as another of the challenges of the job, but Leila had a hard time letting it go.