Excerpt
Often the most disruptive students were the ones that struggled to succeed academically and socially. One day while I was walking through the halls of the social studies wing, a young woman, who was normally very disruptive and challenging to teach, squealed, “Mrs. Olmstead, I love you!” and gave me a great big hug. “What was that for?” I asked. She said her history teacher had just handed her a report card and that I had “given” her her first passing grade in three years. Without taking a breath I replied, “I don’t ‘give’ grades to anyone. You earned that ‘D’ on your own. If you had earned an ‘F’ or an ‘A’ I would have reported that, also.” This small success turned around her attitude in my class and she proved to herself she could achieve, if only in my classroom.