Published: May 1, 1995

One That Didn't Get Away

I admit it. I was a second-semester senior's nightmare in the flesh.

Halfway through the school year, one of the senior English teachers moved. As a 9th grade English teacher, I yearned for the greater challenge of teaching British literature to seniors, so I decided to give up all of my classes and take over all of hers at the semester break. The transition meant winning the minds and hearts of five sections of seniors when all they could think about was the end--spring break and senior slide. No teacher in her right mind could actually expect them to do any work.

One class had more than its share of wisecrackers, chatterboxes, and indiscriminate whiners, including one supreme troublemaker named Chris. This highly disruptive underachiever had been the bane of the former teacher's school day, and she was glad to leave him behind on her...