disheartened

While I was out of the classroom 2 weeks ago, one of my favorite seniors (with "favorite" here meaning not "one whom I like better than the others," but instead "one with whom I have better-than-average repoire") tagged the hell out of my room, beginning with chalk marker on the balcony outside and continuing inside with chalk marker on the board-runners and my flowerpots, Sharpie on the blackboard, the ESL texts and the bilingual dictionaries, and carving into the side blackboard and my own personal stapler, which sits right on my desk. I know it was him beyond the shadow of a doubt, but I can't really exactly prove it, so we had this "I hope you would be the one to remind the other students that this is a space we share" conversation, subtext "I know damn well it was you and you had better not set a toe out of line," though I really was sincere in that I would hope he would be the one to check himself, and until 2 weeks ago I would have trusted him with the world. I feel like he's actually pretty ashamed, and the whole class has been better since they came in and were treated to my seething narrative of the "scavenger hunt of rage" on which I had embarked that morning. It hurt, though, in a personal way that teaching, really, should not. I thought I could not be angrier at or more exhausted by a student I trusted.

Then, this morning, my intermediate ESL class engaged in a mass cheating campaign, resulting in their sharing the entirely wrong answers when I know very well from their previous work that individually, they could have gotten the right ones. The second-highest grade, in a class of 20 students, was a 71.

Then my borderline-failing seniors decided to take the day off for Senior Ditch Day, rather than workshopping their theses and developing support. They'll be gone Friday too, and the essay's firm due date is Monday. I will be at graduation in three weeks and I am beginning to fear they will not.

Then in sixth period my favorite advanced ESL kid, the one I am always defending to other teachers and working my ass off to pull up in terms of literacy, got into a fistfight with another of my students. In my classroom. On my watch. Ever seen two people you care about, who you are physically and intellectually responsible for, start punching each other in the face?

Then, once we'd gone outside and one of them had cried and I had tried not to, and after they had tried to blame me because one had stolen the other's pencil and I had not even done anything about it, I came back inside to the rest of my students laughing and reenacting. "That was tight, Miss."

Linda told me early on that sooner or later, they will break your heart, and only then will you find your toughness as a teacher. She said it happened to her during her first year when (get this) they stole her teddy bear. It is funny the things that set us off, the straws that break the camel's back. We will see who I am when I walk into the classroom tomorrow. And take pity upon the students who have me for the next school year, which begins in just under one month.