Making What Matters Matter

"Do you have any idea how much it costs to fly from America to Malaga?"

Lock jaw silence.

"No? No one. As I thought. It is very expensive. Do you have any idea what Katie has sacrificed to be here and teach you? Do you know how much she has had to do? And you disrespect her. Well, in May she'll leave and you won't have anyone like her, a native speaker to teach you. You are so lucky and you don't even care."

The class melts in mortification.

"Do you think she came here for you all to treat her life like a game?"

The rhetorical question. The closing line.

"It's shameful Katie, I'm sorry. Carry on, they should listen now."

Ears ringing with the Director's chastisment of the worst class in the history of the world (4th B), I struggled to snap back into teaching mode. I had to pull the students out of their shell shocked numbness and beg them to continue with their "My Book of Matter".

And the irony of the topic tip toed to the forefront..Matter, everything around us. How marvelous that Carmen made me matter. I'd been there all along, but the students had never taken me as worth respecting.

Why is it that we always seem to realize what we had when we lose it?


[Is that why Carmen waited till the end of May to defend me?]