October 2, 2026
Dear 6th period LA 9,
Yesterday was hard. I started class with multiple urgent requests to switch seats, despite inviting you to tell me anything I should know before setting a new seating map, contended with a student’s resistance to silent reading, then ended class acting as policeman as I guarded the phones from a crowd of you until the final two minutes when I let you get them, and cleaned up once you left abandoned teabags and borrowed silent reading books boys left on desks, while Leo returned Mango Streets and stray chairs and trash. But the hardest part of sixth period was trying to gather suitable gravity and attention for what I warned were difficult vignettes about physical abuse and controlling partners.
All this took energy, and there’s an emotional toll towards shepherding a class through a careful and caring conversation about self-esteem, abuse, and the complexities of love and independence in a family.
The class emptied. So did I.
To be fair, other things made me tired, too: My sister had a double mastectomy on Monday, meaning she had both of her breasts removed as a response to cancer. It’s something our mother did too—but our mom died when I was 18. My sister was your age. My sister will have a much better prognosis, it seems. You couldn’t have known I was carrying such a weight this week.
But here’s something else you also don’t know: You don’t know if people in our classroom have experienced something like Sally and her father in Mango Street, or if your classmates live with people like Minerva and Rafaela's controlling husbands. You don’t know if there are people in the room who might feel extra exposed as we read these vignettes aloud, and yet you treated these stories lightly, and the subjects too, you treated lightly.
When we came to the end of our reading, I said that fifth period needed to journal about what we’d just read because it was so intense; but for us, I just said we didn’t reach that intensity so you might as well get started on the homework. I was a husk and just stood there blankly for three minutes. A student approached me and said they saw what I was trying to do: they saw me, and I was a good teacher.
Seeing each other is the point of this whole letter. As Esperanza reads more and more, and writes more and more, she also sees more and more. Esperanza imagines Geraldo and his family. She considers the lives of those distant from her, like Ruthie, and those close to her, like Aunt Lupe. This is why novels are so important, as they help us step into the lives of other characters, which allows us to imagine and compassionate more, and to see more in ourselves and more for ourselves.
Novels expand our minds and our hearts. And when we read them with a class, we witness and honor the experiences together, the fictional experiences and the lived experiences in the room.
One of my big goals and hopes for students in my English classes is that you address issues with honesty and vulnerability and grow as neighbors and citizens, and grow in your confidence and acceptance of self, too.
Some say that, developmentally, ninth graders just can’t handle seeing past themselves, and that I shouldn’t expect you to. But I’ve taught ninth graders for over thirty years, and I know you can see beyond your own needs and desires, know that you can see to the hungering, tender world around you, and I believe you should, and I think that right now is very much the time you’re exploring what it means to be you and to be a person around other people.
Some of you may be too young to be aware of the emotions of others and your impacts on them, or some of you may be too young to understand that something small like laughing or goofing might impact a classroom environment or people around the room. But if that’s you, I hope you grow up soon, because this world needs your good, big hearts, and this class needs sensitive generosity to learn what these books have to teach and to get what I am willing to give: My honesty, my vulnerability, and my joy.
Start by taking care of the room, including returning things you borrow and throwing out trash. Next, you might offer to make me tea when you crowd around the kettle, and you might replace the water when you clean your mugs. And then, the harder stuff, but not so hard: be attentive and kind to each other, and attentive and curious to the characters in our books.
Today, the vignettes are harder. Be there for Esperanza, for each other, and for me.
David Grosskopf
Dear 6th period LA 9,
Yesterday was hard. I started class with multiple urgent requests to switch seats, despite inviting you to tell me anything I should know before setting a new seating map, contended with a student’s resistance to silent reading, then ended class acting as policeman as I guarded the phones from a crowd of you until the final two minutes when I let you get them, and cleaned up once you left abandoned teabags and borrowed silent reading books boys left on desks, while Leo returned Mango Streets and stray chairs and trash. But the hardest part of sixth period was trying to gather suitable gravity and attention for what I warned were difficult vignettes about physical abuse and controlling partners.
All this took energy, and there’s an emotional toll towards shepherding a class through a careful and caring conversation about self-esteem, abuse, and the complexities of love and independence in a family.
The class emptied. So did I.
To be fair, other things made me tired, too: My sister had a double mastectomy on Monday, meaning she had both of her breasts removed as a response to cancer. It’s something our mother did too—but our mom died when I was 18. My sister was your age. My sister will have a much better prognosis, it seems. You couldn’t have known I was carrying such a weight this week.
But here’s something else you also don’t know: You don’t know if people in our classroom have experienced something like Sally and her father in Mango Street, or if your classmates live with people like Minerva and Rafaela's controlling husbands. You don’t know if there are people in the room who might feel extra exposed as we read these vignettes aloud, and yet you treated these stories lightly, and the subjects too, you treated lightly.
When we came to the end of our reading, I said that fifth period needed to journal about what we’d just read because it was so intense; but for us, I just said we didn’t reach that intensity so you might as well get started on the homework. I was a husk and just stood there blankly for three minutes. A student approached me and said they saw what I was trying to do: they saw me, and I was a good teacher.
Seeing each other is the point of this whole letter. As Esperanza reads more and more, and writes more and more, she also sees more and more. Esperanza imagines Geraldo and his family. She considers the lives of those distant from her, like Ruthie, and those close to her, like Aunt Lupe. This is why novels are so important, as they help us step into the lives of other characters, which allows us to imagine and compassionate more, and to see more in ourselves and more for ourselves.
Novels expand our minds and our hearts. And when we read them with a class, we witness and honor the experiences together, the fictional experiences and the lived experiences in the room.
One of my big goals and hopes for students in my English classes is that you address issues with honesty and vulnerability and grow as neighbors and citizens, and grow in your confidence and acceptance of self, too.
Some say that, developmentally, ninth graders just can’t handle seeing past themselves, and that I shouldn’t expect you to. But I’ve taught ninth graders for over thirty years, and I know you can see beyond your own needs and desires, know that you can see to the hungering, tender world around you, and I believe you should, and I think that right now is very much the time you’re exploring what it means to be you and to be a person around other people.
Some of you may be too young to be aware of the emotions of others and your impacts on them, or some of you may be too young to understand that something small like laughing or goofing might impact a classroom environment or people around the room. But if that’s you, I hope you grow up soon, because this world needs your good, big hearts, and this class needs sensitive generosity to learn what these books have to teach and to get what I am willing to give: My honesty, my vulnerability, and my joy.
Start by taking care of the room, including returning things you borrow and throwing out trash. Next, you might offer to make me tea when you crowd around the kettle, and you might replace the water when you clean your mugs. And then, the harder stuff, but not so hard: be attentive and kind to each other, and attentive and curious to the characters in our books.
Today, the vignettes are harder. Be there for Esperanza, for each other, and for me.
David Grosskopf
