Half-full

My grade 8's have just discovered they can change the world.
I got to watch that beautiful, heavy thought rise up slowly at the horizon of our classroom and gently flood the room with a dawning light that brightened their unsuspecting faces. One minute they were children disengaged from the 'they' in those delightfully detached phrases like 'they should help the poor'. Instead they became them; and now they want to help the poor. My little friends are presently working on proposals for fundraising events to purchase a generator for a school in Rwanda. They're almost as excited as I am. We have class meetings that get so loud for the enthusiasm we share that I worry other teachers will start to suspect I'm not teaching the curriculum properly. Every minute someone is coming up with an idea even better than the one before and I cannot believe it's coming out of their mouths.
The most beutiful part is that there is no one to tell them it can't be done; no one to squash their idealism; no one to destroy the perfect joy that come from philanthropy. And when they grow up next week and graduate and get jobs and houses and kids they'll never be able to deny again in their lives that the power of one is enough to shift the whole big, lazy universe.
Now honestly, as if you wouldn't want to be a teacher. I get to watch as our future grabs hold of this rotten, selfish world and claims it for justice! (And I didn't even do anything! I just hung out and listened!)