Was my need to protect my sanity greater than my desire to understand my student?

As told to Chaia Frishman

For over three decades, I was the middle school grammar teacher.

I graduated from worrying what all the parents would think of me as a teacher to being the teacher the parents worried would judge their pedagogy skills. Not only was I teaching my students’ children, but I was on the cusp of teaching my “grandstudents.”

You might be familiar with the comic strip of a woman speaking to a lump under a blanket, saying, “I know you think they hate you and they’re mean, but you have to go to school. You’re the principal.”

Over my many years of teaching, that was the furthest thing from my reality.

Except the year it wasn’t.

That year, school began as usual.

And then came Mendy*. Adorable, charming as cherry ices, but with the seeming goal of doing whatever he could to make my life difficult.