I made a girl cry yesterday.

My classes are taking quizzes this week, and in my first, after several warnings, one student continued to occasionally say things to her neighbor. So, I took her quiz away from her.

“Madame! Madame!” several students said to me a few minutes later. “She’s started crying.”

I looked over at the student whose quiz I had just marked as a zero. Her head was on her desk, and her shoulders were shaking, as though she was breathing deeply, or crying.

I’m still trying to find my footing as a teacher. And no amount of training can prepare you for goats wandering by your classroom; boys who ask you to go to the bathroom, then look like they are going to pee their pants when you deny them; and the feeling of making a student cry.

I like to believe in the good in people, to the point where it is sometimes a fault. Like when I let those two boys leave together in what seemed like a dire situation to use the bathroom, only to have them disappear from class for 10 minutes. And I don’t want to fail my students. And I don’t yet believe that there are those students who are beyond help.

It’s a hard line to walk being a teacher my students respect, but also ending class by singing “Skidamarinky Dinky Dink.”

I offered the student a make-up quiz for after class Friday.

I’ll leave it up to after Friday to see if I regret that decision.