Let me start with a disclaimer, I was a public school teacher for twenty years. I taught in the Midwest, but contrary to the belief that Midwesterners are mainly rural folk, I taught mainly working class, inner city kids. One of the schools I taught in was populated with nothing but children who thought milk came from the Anderson Erickson building about a quarter of a mile down the street.

There was nothing Norman Rockwell- or Mayberry-like about the students I saw year after year. Their parents worked at the tire plant or in the service industry and some didn't work at all. The neighborhoods they lived in were run down and sometimes gang infested. A good number of them drank and did drugs at young ages and the girls ended up young mothers more often than they should have.

My job often went beyond my subject matter. I kept snacks in the drawer for the ones who came hungry and feminine protection for the girls who didn't have change. If I didn't have bus tokens, I had coins and more than once I listened to children talk about difficult home lives or answered questions about pregnancy issues from those who were pregnant and those who feared they might be.

I became a teacher because I discovered I had a calling and the talent to back it up. A talent which extended far beyond my ability to make literature live and grammar make sense. I wasn't one of the university bottom-feeders who couldn't find any other subject to major in. In fact, I didn't major in education at all. I was an English major who could have just as easily been a journalist or lawyer, but I felt the world had too many of those already and what it really needed from me was the commitment and passion necessary to walk into a room full of teenagers everyday and, with just the force of my wit and will, shine a little light on them. More