It is Molly Pollak's secondfloor apartment. Her spare bedroom is filled with decades of classroom1. "Those are all my high school yearbooks," Pollak says. "Those are middle school yearbooks. " Even more shelves are 2 with old lesson plans. "I really need to throw them away," she 3.
But after 40 years' teaching, there's one book Pollak is 4 to throw away. She received it a few months ago, just before her 5 — a bittersweet moment in the life of any teacher. As news of her leaving spread, Ora Bayewitz, one of Pollak's students, reached other ones and 6 them to write in. It was surprising that in the end Pollak got 75 7. many being pages long.
"There are a handful of people that 8 who I am and you are one of them," writes Chris Ryan, one of her students in the 1980s. Others 9 a trying moment, or an academic breakthrough in middle school. Pollak scans through them. "It's 10," she whispers.
When Pollak first read this book, she noticed something: The 11 from Pollak's first year of teaching, and the ones from 40 years later, are very 12. It seemed that where she was teaching didn't 13, because she saw the same theme 14. The theme is like Jackson Krule wrote: "Molly treated us like adults, and 15 us to rise to the occasion."
