I think I am a tough grader, because I feel like it's my job to teach them to write well. I hope my students say I'm a fair teacher.

Real education is about genuine understanding and the ability to figure things out on your own; not about making sure every 7th grader has memorized all the facts some bureaucrats have put in the 7th grade curriculum.

I know, but it reminds me that I have no control over life. Life doesn't care if you're a soldier or a seventh grader or an aquatic reptile. Things happen.

I'm still very connected to my family to the world I grew up in. I understand what it means to be afraid that you can't pay a doctor's bill. Or to have to make the choice between buying a band uniform for a seventh-grader and making the insurance payment on time. That will never leave me. It was how I lived until I was well into my adult years.

Many seventh graders I know in Illinois as well as around the Nation are studying the Constitution. I was pretty impressed with the quality of education our children are receiving because they had not expected me to ask them about it.

And I remember as a second or third grader having some autonomy to go to the store if I felt like it walk home take my time kick the can. We were on our own schedule after school so that was cool.