And it Shone Through a Banana...

It's always this way. It's always a mixed bag. We're always mixed bags. There are successes and failures, love and hate, virtue and vice, whizzing around us and out of us more quickly than we can label them.

Even though it was a day in which one of my 7th graders was pulled to the hallway so a dime bag could be pulled from his shoe. And even though the kid who had given him the dime bag begged the principal for mercy because he was earnestly trying to help his mom pay the bills. And even though another of my students is resisting school and guidance because she is worn out with her reading disability and appears more and more to be biding her time until she can  drop out, the virtue still shone through today. And it shone through a banana.

You see, there's this brother and sister at my school. The brother is about as rough as they come, and he and his little sister are late every day, which  means they miss the universal breakfast that the other kids get. And it means that the two kids stay hungry most days  'til their 12:00 lunchtime. Well, in between 1st and 2nd period, as the sister walked out of my Special Ed. room, and her brother walked in, the brother took out a banana that he'd gotten from who-knows-where, and split off half for his sister. And before I thought to ask the boy why he was eating contraband food in the hallway, the sister offered an answer to a more important question, "He's my brother, he takes care of me."