A Teacher's Memoir

Wow.  This is dark.  I wrote it in Study Hall, I think my Junior year of HS.

A Teacher’s Memoir

Joey Aversa-Rhode

I’ve taught High School for ten years.  During that time, I’ve given many assignments to many students, including a murderer, an evangelist, a professional boxer, a thief, and an alcoholic.

The murderer was a quiet little boy who sat in the front row and looked at me with pale blue eyes.  The evangelist was one of the most popular boys in the school and had the lead in the Junior play.  The boxer lounged in his desk, gazing out the window or throwing wads of paper at other students.  The thief was a happy lad who always hummed a cheerful tune.  The alcoholic rarely made eye contact, spoke only when spoken to, and preferred to remain unnoticed.  All of them sat in my class, sat and stared across worn, brown desks.

I must have been a great help to them.  I taught them rhyming schemes of Elizabethan sonnets and how to diagram complex sentences.