THE PHONE CALL

I did not call the student's parents.

Maybe I should have. Maybe not. But all I know is that after he left in tears, my student came back for the last fifteen minutes of lunch and completed an astounding amount of work. He did more work in 10 minutes than I had seen him do in three weeks straight. And that is no lie.

Since he was clearly motivated to do the work to avoid the dreaded phone call home, I told him thank you for working hard, and let's keep it up. And I will not call your parents. He came in the next day at lunch.

Now here is a true miracle: Today in class, this same student raised his hand to answer a question from the homework!

Fancy that.