I have had two students so far that I would classify as geniuses in regards to understanding the complexity of literature. They just get communication through writing better than most people, and are very cerebral thinkers who are interested in writing, reading, and the entire process behind transferring ideas. I had another student who will be in public office within time - he's a smart guy, comes from a solid family, and has the look and speech patterns of someone in politics. I don't mean that as an insult. I told him constantly that he'd be president one day. He began college majoring in education but changed to political science.

I don't grade on a curve or anything like that. Every written assignment or project I grade, I use a rubric to provide rationale for the grade. I think it's both fair and important for students to know what I'm looking for and what I expect from them. I make every rubric available to the students upon introducing the project (whether they utilize that or not is another story) so there aren't any tricks in how I grade. I try to be as transparent as possible. I never let my personal opinions get in the way of how I grade a given student's assignment - that's petty and unprofessional and I'm sorry you had to deal with that. I like the weirdos, anyway.

I work in a very poor community. It is the poorest county in the state. At least 80% of my students live under the poverty line and about 3-4% are wealthy.

I haven't heard many rumors, just stories that would surprise and shock most people. I was a pretty busy kid in high school with the ladies, but what I hear now is pretty outlandish. Perhaps I'm getting old, but I don't recall many exhibitionist tendencies in my classmates when I was a student.

The saddest story is a student I had last year who was a foster kid. She had a real tough upbringing - parents on drugs, a history of abuse, ADHD, the works - and I connected to her pretty quick. As a kid in the system - foster care - she was pretty good at identifying how to get what she wanted and how to manipulate people, but she was genuinely a great kid who just needed some stability, someone to tell her they loved her and they weren't going to give up on her no matter what. Of course, she never got that and was bounced around from place to place. She was removed from our school and placed somewhere else, and it's hard to tell what will happen to her. That's kind of always the saddest story: you just don't know what will happen, and how people never get a chance to become their ideal selves for a variety of reasons.