One of my most difficult students – a kid who started the year off okay but who has a troubled family life and has had numerous outbursts and verbally attacked any number of teachers and administrators over the past few weeks – had a relatively minor confrontation with me on Friday at school, which ended with the student walking off angry. Saturday, s/he called to apologize. Turns out s/he called all the teachers and expressed a wish to start over. I don’t know what’s behind this and I’m not naive enough to imagine that it will be smooth sailing from here on out, but I do know it requires enormous courage for a young teenager to call all his/her teachers on the weekend to apologize and express a wish for reconciliation; most adults could not do it. We shall see.
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ms. frizzle 