After filling out fifty applications, going through four interviews, and winning one offer, I took what I could get — a teaching job at what I considered a distant wild area: western New Jersey. My characteristic optimism was alive only when I reminded myself that I would be doing what I had wanted to do since I was fourteen — teaching English．

School started. I was teaching English. I worked hard, taking time off only to eat and sleep. And then there was my sixth-grade class who were only six years younger than me. I was struggling in my work as a young idealistic teacher. I wanted to make literature come alive and to promote a love for the written word. The students wanted to throw spitballs (纸团)and whisper dirty words in the back of the room.

In college, I had been taught that a successful educator should ignore bad behavior. So I did, confident that, as the textbook had said, the bad behavior would disappear as I gave my students positive attention. But in fact, humans, particularly teenagers, rarely seem reasonable. By the time my boss, who was also my taskmaster, known to be the strictest, most demanding, most quick to fire inexperienced teachers, came into the classroom to observe me, the students exhibited very little good behavior to praise.

My boss sat in the back of the room. The boys in the class were making animal noises, hitting each other while the girls filed their nails or read magazines. I just pretended it all wasn’t happening and went on lecturing and tried to ask some inspiring questions. My boss, sitting in the back of the room, seemed to be growing bigger and bigger. After twenty minutes, he left silently. Visions of unemployment marched before my eyes. I felt mildly proud that I got through the rest of class without crying, but at my next free period, I had to face him.

After class, I walked to his office, took a deep breath and opened the door.

Inspired by his advice, I walked toward the classroom, determined to make a change.

My wife called, “Will you come here and make your darling daughter eat her food?" I rushed to the scene. My only daughter, Sindu, looked frightened. Her eyes were filled with tears. In front of her was a bowl filled with rice. Sindu particularly hated rice.

“Sindu, darling, why don't you take a few mouthfuls of this?" Sindu softened a bit, and wiped her tears with the back of her hands.

“Ok, Dad. If I eat this, will you give me whatever I ask for?” “Oh, sure, darling.” Slowly and painfully, she finished eating the whole bowl. Sindu came to me with her eyes wide with expectation.

“Dad, I want to have my hair shaved off（剃光）this Sunday!”

“Darling, why don't you ask for something else? Girls look ugly with a clean-shaven head. We will be sad seeing you with a clean-shaven head.”

“Dad, you saw how difficult it was for me to eat the rice." Sindu was in tears. "And you promised to give me whatever I ask for." My promise must be kept. With her head clean-shaven, Sindu had a round face, and her eyes looked big and beautiful.

On Monday morning, I dropped her at her school. It was a sight to watch my hairless Sindu walking towards her classroom. Just then, a boy shouted from a car, "Sindu, please wait for me!”

What struck me was the hairless head of that boy.

“That boy who is walking along with your daughter is my son Harish.”

Without introducing herself, a lady got out of the car and continued.

Harish is suffering from leukemia（白血病）.

That day several students of her class went to school with their heads hairless.

The paper on my desk was yellow, with straight blue lines stretching across it. The lines repeated themselves all the way down the page. I counted them. Twenty-six straight lines ran across the paper. The yellow color reminded me of sunshine. In summer, the sun is bright yellow like that, and sky is blue like those lines. I loved blue-blue is for getting lost in…

“You haven’t written a word yet, have you?” Miss Perry had found me out. I hung my head, as in past years, and gave her the lines I had given to previous teachers.

“I don’t feel like it.”

The truth was that I wanted to write about something different. “Write about Your Best Friend,” demanded the assignment on the board. I didn’t have a best friend. I had a few friends, but I didn’t want to claim any of them as my “best”, because I was afraid they might pick someone else. What if I picked a “best” friend and then someone different, who thought I was their best friend, heard my paragraph read aloud and never spoke to me again? It was a stupid topic. I was disappointed in Miss Perry for choosing it.

I knew Miss Perry must have heard about me from my other teachers. I had already prepared myself for another year of listening to teachers scold me. I was only nine years old, but my ears had been full to the voices of my elders. My teachers, my parents and the school principal had all given me the speech “What are we supposed to do with you?”. That was probably what Miss Perry was about to say, too.

However, there was something different about Miss Perry.

I bet I was touched.