Sunshine (Student/Teacher Romance) 18+

5

Abel

"I just wanted to start today off addressing something I do not take lightly. I'm not going to tolerate bullying in this class. At all. Anytime anyone calls another student out of their name, I'm writing them up. They'll have a mandatory visit with Principal Morgan."

Kaliyah raises her hand.

I point at her. "Yes?"

"So, you're saying we can't call Ari stray anymore?"

I breathe out heavily. They said they'd test you.

I walk around my desk, grabbing my pen and biting the cap off as my other hand opens the drawer for the detention slips.

"Oh, come on Mr. C., it was hypothetical!" She laughs. "I didn't call her that to her face. I was just asking a question, geez."

"Well, you'll be hypothetically in Principal Morgan's office after school. Sorry."

She quirks an eyebrow as I slide the slip onto her desk, but doesn't argue.

"In other news, I'll be handing back these composition books." Underneath the white board, I slide the shelf door open, revealing the mounds of composition books I'd spent way too much money on yesterday, and spent way too much time hauling into the school this morning.

I take a few stacks and set them on every first desk in each row, watching them begin to hand them backward.

"We will be having morning assignments in these books, but I also want you guys to use these to communicate with me. To let me know how I can better myself in this classroom, to let me know what bothers you about my class, or what you enjoy, and if you feel like venting to me about something, go for it. Whatever you write in here is confidential. Doesn't leave this room, or this book, and I'll respond back to you everyday."

"I know exactly what I'm going to write," Kaliyah says and I'm almost certain she's going to write a page about how I shouldn't have given her detention.

"Good girl, that's what I like to hear." I wink, but regret it as soon as I see her and a few other girls blushing beside her and clear my throat. "Anyway, this morning I'd like for you all to write a half a page about school. What you like about it, what you dislike. How you feel your semester is starting off. Anything school related. I'll give you all fifteen minutes, starting now."

I hear the pages flipping and backpacks unzipping as I return to my desk.

After the fight that'd happened in the hall, I'd spent two class periods thinking about it. Thinking about how it's only been one day and the girl with the yellow backpack who sits in the back had been terrorized every time I'd seen her.

She looks like she's bottling it up. Like she's got more weight on her shoulders than just these cruel girls at school. It haunted me all day yesterday. I thought about it for hours, and then it occurred to me. There's probably more like her, more kids who get bullied. More kids who have self esteem issues, problems at school. Problems at home.

I feel like this is a noninvasive way to get through to those who need it. To the ones who don't have anyone to talk to and just need an ear. Hopefully.

Once those fifteen minutes were up, I instructed the class to pass their books up to the front desk in their row. As I walked across each, picking up the stacks, I noticed what Kaliyah's wearing.

A black sweatshirt—when it's ninety seven degrees of Nevada summer outside.

And boldly scrawled across her chest, Fuck school.