Teach Your Children Well

Days as a teacher are so thick with decisions of the human variety. Not sure what that last line means but I liked how it sounded as it came out - now, not as much, but I'll keep it. Today I gave kids a preview of their grades if they wanted to know. One girl wants it be a surprise she said, but she has a feeling it'll be her highest grade (it will be, unless someone gives her 101). Someone who told me that she'll get in trouble if she gets less than an 80 never followed through on trying to boost her grade. I boosted it a bit out of mercy, but wouldn't stretch al the way to a hundred. Another student has been long in making up a test so I had to give him an incomplete. Many other nuanced moments and decisions of the human variety (there it is again) came up today. Another teacher told me that a student cited a story today that I'd told her class two years ago (the story of Yosef Mokir Shabbat). I told him Rav Chaim Schmuelevitz' take on that story (that if you try to oppose
G-d's plan then the way you fight it becomes part of the way He carries His plan through). Just as I was saying that tI thought that explanation was profound, he said that it was cute. KeShaim ShePartzufeihen Shonot, Kach Daateihen Shonot.

CSNY's Looking Forward serenades me as I write:

Crosby, Stills, and Nash
still have what to sing and say
though they are not young

Billy Collins gave me permission
to write the way that I envision
a poem; sonnet or haiku
even if I have no clue
as to what a poem truly is
it's enough to know it's mine not his
So I sing my song
Slowly it comes along
Every day until I die
In the blink of an eye
Slowly, slowly says the sloth
While the butterfly replaces the moth
I never know what to say
I watch and write, my way