Choices

Last week, feeling like the 8th graders needed something amusing for poetry Friday, we read the poem “Bliss Point or What Can Best Be Achieved by Cheese” by Benjamin Garcia. Then, I challenged students to write about their favorite snack food. I recalled a time when I was under 7, and had to make a hard snack choice.

On Saturdays we would get a dime

Then go to the Tanners’ store to get our weekly treat.

I used half to buy a Mars bar

And the other half for penny candy

Licorice cigars, jube-jubes, jawbreakers.

You could get a lot of penny candy for a nickel.

Then, one day, the unthinkable happened:

The price of a Mars bar went up to a dime

And I had choices to make.

Should I get only the Mars bar, which I loved,

Or spend the whole dime on penny candy.

It was a hard choice.

I don’t remember what I chose.

I just remember the dilemma-

My first encounter with inflation.

Feeling appreciated

Six years. 

For six years, I held onto the letters. And let me tell you, I have grumbled about it. 

In June 2016, my Humanities teaching partner convinced me we should have our 6^th graders write letters to their future selves that we would mail the year they graduated from high school. I was all in. Over the next six years, I repeated the task with four other classes – all but the COVID years.

Last week, I dropped that first batch in the red tub for District mail. This morning, this message was sent to our school:

It was the best gift to receive on the first day of teacher appreciation week.