Finding Your Kwan: One Remedy for Teacher Attrition

By Coleen Armstrong

School had just been dismissed for the day. I left my seventh-period cafeteria study hall and headed back toward my classroom to fetch the books and papers I’d be carting home that evening.

As I walked through the open doorway of my room, there sat the first-year teacher whose sophomore English had exited moments earlier. She was sitting at my desk, sorting through her own stack of essays. I nodded, smiled, and then asked, “How’s it going?”

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