Fragile, broken, beautiful
I love my students. (students from class 6 after winning their basketball game) And sometimes, I’m reminded of how very fragile they are. It’s easy for me to forget, because they’re so young and full of energy (generally, although they’re also pretty good at sleeping on their desks) and life and craziness and joking and they bring so much mayhem and chaos (of my favorite kind) into my life. But in this past week’s lesson we talked about consequences, so I asked them to write about three events in their lives that have impacted them deeply, for good or for ill. Today, in the flood of sheets of paper being dropped on my podium, James jabbed his finger at the second line he had written. “This one,” he said, making sure that I saw it. We had no time to talk then, but once I had gotten home I read through their answers more carefully and remembered that he had pointed his out to me: an allergic reaction to penicillin as a kid. So I sent him a message on WeChat abo