Another Paper

Here is another paper handed in from a student. It's titled "Great America," a reminiscence of a girl and her family going to the Great America theme park when she was a child. The writing is a mix of feelings: elation at the promise of going, and the tension of an underlying feeling in her family. She said after a day at the park, she finally asked her mom if everything was all right. Her mom revealed to her, crying, that she and her dad were divorcing. The news devastated this student, and the rest of the trip, she said, felt like a funeral.

Over my years of teaching, when I read student papers about the one event in their life that has made the biggest impact on them, overwhelmingly it has been the divorce of their parents. This is also heartbreaking for me. These kids are broken from that point. Many learn to live with it, but they're never the same. Heartbreaking.