This week's blessing comes from the most difficult class of children I teach. This class of 28 seventh-graders includes seven or eight obnoxious, ungrateful, and downright mean-spirited children who refuse to learn and to cooperate so that the other kids can learn. Like my other classes, I see them twice a week for lessons in reading and writing. I search high and low for reading material that is both current and interesting for them.

Without fail, these angry kids do everything they can to keep the lesson from getting off the ground. They talk, they talk back, they interrupt, they throw papers, they break the pencils I give them and throw them at me or at other students. They make jokes about every kind of sex you can imagine, violence against each other, and the shoes on my feet.

I call their homes and their mothers promise to have their fathers or some other relative beat them. I send them to the office; they are suspended and return after a few days unchanged. I attempt to work on-on-one with them; they stop working when I leave them to attempt the work for themselves so I can work with another student. Since September, I have worked hard to discipline this bunch.

To be sure, there are good kids in this group As hell broke loose on Thursday, I watched the class. I stopped teaching and watched. After the principal came in, silenced them for 20 seconds, and promised suspensions to anyone who misbehaved, they continued misbehaving. Then, the kids who want to learn had their hands up, asked for feedback, took it, and kept working. Others asked to move away from the bad element. A handful of others did as little as possible. I continued teaching the ones who would be taught. Good things happened in this miniature madhouse.

I am wondering why some kids out and out reject kindness. I am wondering how it is these kids--whose behavior is not unique to my classroom and whose parents openly acknowledge they can't keep track of which teacher called when--are permitted the opportunity to bring the quality of education down for the kids who want to succeed.

My mind turns to the veterans I know, to the decent people who work hard and do right as a matter of course, to the good kids whose economic poverty places them in the company of kids who seem bereft of decency, and I cry with frustration and disappointment.

This weekly grief is a blessing even as it breaks my heart because it can and does break my heart. It is a blessing because it has me wondering. How can decency prevail?

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