Doctor Grandma

This semester,

One student’s grandmother died,

another had an untimely family death,

one wants to be a counselor for LGBTQ+ teens

and was encouraged to find research

on her gender identity,

Another told me his father lost a Federal job

and could no longer pay his tuition,

This semester they wrote paragraphs with pen in hand,

in order to find their own voice,

and not use AI as an automatic knee jerk reflex,

and I taught double negatives, run-on sentences and fragments, because they are juniors and seniors and had not learned it,

and they are not stupid,

and I told them they had to be bilingual

and use the King’s English in a job interview,

one left school because her boyfriend beat her up,

she returned in 3 weeks and got a B.

This semester, no one failed,

everyone took their final exam,

4 earned an A,

3 earned a B,

2 earned a C,

no one plagiarized an assignment,

and I call that a success.

This morning I will turn in grades,

and I feel sad that life is so hard,

that we all experience loss and hardship

at the worst of times,

that some won’t graduate,

that some didn’t care enough to do their assignments

and come to class.

But I embrace all life as it is

and give thanks to God

for His unfailing love.

This morning I am thankful for those who finished,

for those who will graduate,

for those who persisted through it all

to do their best,

and I am thankful

that I found

my calling.

cfblack, 11-24-25

This entry was posted on November 24, 2025 at 8:27 am and is filed under poetry, Sociology, teaching. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.