Curtain call

There are few pleasures as deeply satisfying as seeing someone use a gift that you have given to him or her. Months after the birthday, holiday, or the occasion that called for a celebration has passed, to see the person take out your gift, now worn with use and love, fills the heart with a sense of meaning.

I love giving useful gifts that blend seamlessly into life's routines to remind the person of your love for them in the most mundane moments. It is perhaps this love of useful gifts that makes teaching so attractive to me.

It's a dream of mine to have students come back to me in the future and to say that they've learned something useful to their lives. And this fantasy seems acutely out of reach in years such as this past one, where the 9 month school year journey seemed long and weary. But as I made the announcement, "Ok, take your warm up notebook home today, because that was the very last English warm up we'll do", I felt a wave of sadness and premature nostalgia for times gone by.

A year can be hard, easy, heart-wrenching, or unemotional. But it goes by quickly, a blip in the road of life. I wish that I had shown more empathy, compassion, and love to those 150 hooligans. But most of all, I hope that I've given them the gift of knowledge to use forever.