Bronwyn Harris, Author

I had the distinct pleasure last weekend of speaking to the Yuba City area chapter of Delta Kappa Gamma, a professional society for women educators. I was a little intimidated because in this group of mostly retired educators, there were literally hundreds of years of experience altogether. And here I was, only having spent eight years in the classroom, talking to them! I felt like I should have been the one seated and listening. The experience, however, was amazing. I was so honored by the compliments on my book, because I knew that these people understood. These were not empty words of flattery from people who say, "Oh, I could never do that!" These were people who had been in the trenches themselves, who knew the exhaustion of teaching, the feeling of finally maybe not being tired on your LAST day of vacation before you go back. They understood what it's like to not be able to sleep because you're so worried about a child who's not related to you, or to drea...

A friend sent me this article called The Singular Sorrow of Grieving Behind Bars. This friend has been with me to visit my former student "Jorge" who is in prison and knows how much he can relate to this. Jorge's mother, never a stable person, died two years ago at the age of 36. He is in prison for 19 years and could not attend her funeral and could not attend the mass said for her on the one-year anniversary of her death. (I was honored to be invited to that and took pictures to send to him of the altar with flowers and her photos). It made me think about how hard grieving is. I mean, when a person has support, community, and ceremonies for closure, grief is still really really hard. The hardest thing for humans. Now I try to imagine doing that while locked up, with no family or friends, and no freedom. No closure, no ceremonies, no ability to see the person one more time or be surrounded by others grieving. I don't know if I could do that. I mean, I don't...

My seven-year-old niece is practicing being a teacher. Many of us did this to some extent. I'm pretty sure I forced my sister and brother to sit still while I read spelling words to them that they didn't care about. Later, when I really was a teacher, I would see fifth-grade students come into my third-grade classroom and help kids in that same way, the "I really feel special acting like a teacher," way. It's really fun to see kids do that. It's very special to see that the relationship is so important that they imitate it and aspire to it. My niece, S, is very committed to her teacher role, not even slowed down by the fact that she doesn't have any siblings. She has been a teacher for her stuffed monkey, my parents' dog, and lately, a collection of stuffed squashes she was given. It's really fun to see how excited she gets about playing school. She writes out schedules that are better than any school I've ever seen: "Hello,...