Short Story - Pupil of the Soul

Teacher Appreciation Week

Pupil of the Soul

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It’s by no accident that I chose to teach the eighth grade, for it is at this level where students can become most affected by those entrusted to educate them. The delicate transition between childhood and young adult, these young minds are oftentimes set on the path to their future during this last year of true innocence. The high school years that are to come will cement what has been instilled, the college years for those who go on towards it putting the finishing shine to the beautiful and colorful patterns of the wings I have placed on these students during their time of metamorphosis.

The patterns can be as diverse as the students themselves, but the type can be found under one of three categories, usually separated within that first month of the new school year.

Just about all of them come to class on that first day with a good attitude toward learning, all starting off equal in my teacher’s log, the next day all turning in their assigned essay on what they did during the summer. Of course within this first lesson one can begin to identify the different levels of academic strength among them all, but it is by the end of this first week, no later than the beginning of the second when true colors begin to show, no longer able to hide what kind of student they have been up to this point and therefore how they are likely to continue.

Usually under one of three categories; the largest group always comes in the form of average. Those who are in my class to get a decent grade and then move on to an average future.

Next there are the troublemakers, the slackers, the straight-up weirdos, putting forth minimal effort, whatever will get them a passing D, and sometimes not even that.

Then you have the smallest group among the three. Those who strive to be perfectionists in their obsessive pursuit of getting into a top university, almost always behind such ambition the parents who have conditioned such compulsion. Actually, all three groups come from this conditioning background, but it is most predominant with the overachievers. 

There is a fourth category, but it is so rare that an educator will most likely only come across this extraordinary phenomenon once in their whole career. A golden gem of a student, or as my oldest of colleagues calls them, a pupil of the soul. One who pays attention like no other. With an eagerness to learn, to know, they are simply there to be in the moment of enlightenment, their eyes blossoming with every question they have answered. 

Entering my second decade as a teacher I was beginning to think such talk was myth, not only having yet to come across this type of exceptional mind, but knowing of no one else from my generation of educators who had come upon it in their own classrooms.

But then I met Elise.