A life in progress

This afternoon, I went into my principal's office for a moment to ask a routine question about a student.  We chit-chatted for a couple minutes and then he gave this dramatic sigh like I'd never heard come from him before and handed me a couple of pages stapled together.  I had no idea what was happening, but I took the pages and started reading. The first was a student ID photo with some basic information -- printed out from our student information system.  While this was not my  student, I was aware of him.  We are a very small school with a dozen teachers and one administrator; everyone knows everyone - literally.  At times we have as few as 25 students on campus.  This particular student had recently completed our program and returned to a comprehensive high school, but recently enough that the name and face was still familiar. The second page was a news article giving some sketchy details of a murder.  I'm sure pretty much everyone can see where this is going.  Our

Yesterday (October 5) was world teacher day, in pretty much every country except America.  Technically it existed here, but there was no special pomp and circumstance for those of us teaching America's youth.  I didn't get anything special, though things didn't go particularly badly.  Today a student told me I was going to "burn in hell for my sins," though he didn't specify what.  My husband broke up two fights in his classroom... all in all, not a great day of celebration. Let me tell you a story... I experienced one World Teacher Day in all its glory while I was teaching in China back... well... a long time ago, however Chinese friends tell me this is still the way it works. At the time, I taught 12 or 14 classes.  I don't remember.  It was a lot.  It sounds insane, but I only saw each class once a week for 45 minutes, so I didn't actually teach that  many classes.  One day, everyone I see starts wishing me "happy teacher day!"  I&