Emily and the Book of Mormon

Several of you know of Emily, a very sweet, but very needy girl in my homeroom this year. She does love history and so aced my class and also worked as my self-appointed teacher assistant. For some months I have been worried about her; her family loves her and seems very wonderful, but yet she is often lonely and seems to just have a hole in her life. Over a month ago the thought came to me that I should give her a copy of the Book of Mormon. I really debated this as I felt like her parents might be angry and certainly I would not do that while she was my student. Well, I had a copy of the Doubleday version of the Book of Mormon here which doesn't have all the references at the bottom. I felt that since that was a version sold in bookstores, if here parents happened on it, it would seem less offensive. I wrote her a message inside and gave it to her this week after the last day. She seemed very touched and even stopped by this week to let me know she has begun reading it. I gave her the lds.org website to go to if she has questions that she wants answered besides asking me. I hold great hope that somewhere, somehow, this will make a difference in her life.

School is almost done!

OK, I will be SO glad that school will be out, but I hate the last bit here. You can't teach any more because grades are closed. Parents of kids who are still failing get all full of drama and bluster (like it is the teacher's fault at this late date?) The classroom is depressing without the stuff on the walls and there is just a lot of chaos which I don't handle well. On the upside, I had a very tough homeroom this year full of big, dorky kids. All year the joke has been "well, at least you will win tug-of-war." So today was field day and of course, we won tug-of-war. I told all my teammates that I want the quiet, sweet good class next year even if they are all short and scrawny. The year-long putting up with big trouble-making kids is not worth the little traveling tug-of-war trophy in my book.