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Back in September, I was offered a position to teach down in Houston, but for most of that month, it was a slow process of clearing all the background checks for satisfying the school and the state that I was not a threat to the students and that I met the requirements for the position (i.e. had actually graduated from an accredited university).

On the Thursday evening before I left near the end of the month for the drive down to Texas from Virginia, I was hanging out with my sister at a local farmers market and I got a call via Facebook messenger from my mom who informed us that our 98-year-old grandmother had died just a couple of hours earlier in the hospital from renal failure. She was a month and a half shy of her 99th birthday. Unfortunately, I couldn't take the time off to travel over to attend the funeral and such, but my sister went on behalf of both of us.

For much of that month of October (funeral was at the end of October), I had the stress of grandma's passing weighing heavily on my mind, and the kids weren't exactly helping by trying my patience constantly (but that's 9th and 10th graders for ya). I finally broke though when I had a heart to heart talk with the kids, during which I asked them what their ambitions and goals for the future where, and they told me that they didn't have any goals because they saw themselves as worthless... I turned around and told them right away to never think of themselves as worthless. I know they aren't worthless, and that they should not think of themselves as such. I told them how I had struggled in high school, ending up with a 1.8 GPA when I graduated, and how I gave up and buried my head in the sand, but that I had finally made the commitment and pushed forward to earn my degree.

I also noted about how I had sacrificed so much to be there for them, including missing out on my grandmother's funeral, and having taken out a loan to be able to move down to Texas from Virginia (which I'm still paying back), and I pushed them to find a passion and think about what is needed to succeed in that passion. They eventually began making dream boards for themselves as I pushed them to set short and long term goals for themselves.

Though I missed out on it, I think in some ways it was needed because it did help my students out with me giving them that life talk.