A love story

This is my love story, a really unusual love story. It's not about a man and a woman, or any usual relationship. It's about a teacher, an aging teacher, retired for 10 years, who went to teach at an "inner city" school. To teach French there.

I needed the money and could not find a job teaching English or working as a librarian, two of my areas of certification. School started and I still did not have a job. I had been looking at this French position at this "inner city" school, but was really hesitant to interview. One, I am not that fluent in French. I can read and write it and speak hesitantly, so I was not eager to do something I did not excel in. Two, I did not know how I would do in a school that was 99.8% another race. How would they accept me? That was my biggest worry. As it turned out, that worry was quite grounded.

Students were absolutely horrible to me--disrespectful, rude, they minimized me every way they could. The disciplinarian tried to work with me. He told me I had to earn their trust. So that's what I did. I worked more on relationships. French came along--it, after all, was the structure of our relationship.

Perhaps it was the hard work, but eventually, I came to absolutely love those students. Nearly every one of them. I learned so much from them. Most of them came to love me, too. But not all. That's to be expected.

There's so much left to say, but I'm leaving it unsaid. The bottom line is what a remarkable year I had, what a great experience it was, and how much I would like to do it again.