Some pretty cool things that happened in the classroom this week:

• kids who are not friends and have nothing in common other than being in the same period together helped each other immensely through the processes; 
• a couple of students were not happy with "meh" negatives and insisted on re-shooting because they knew they could do a better job, vowing to come in extra to meet the deadline;
• a student's conversation with a challenging classmate involved telling him how he is in a good class because everyone helps each other; the compassion and sincerity were wonderful to see;
• students having a political discussion around the development sink and explaining how they came to have the opinions they were expressing;
• one of the more challenging students I have comes in extra to get the work done;
• another student requests Frank Sinatra for the darkroom and is disappointed when I left it on my toilet at home; I vowed to remember it on Monday.

Seeing and experiencing this goodness in my classroom makes the job easier to handle.  With so many varied personalities thrown together in a room - all levels, all backgrounds - many horrible things could happen.  Luckily, that is not the case.  I know that some of my kids are not angels.  Some might be mean to others, deceitful, far from exemplary people.  But for the time that they are with me, they are good people.  I treat them as I want them to treat me and each other.  And it works.  

And then I step out into the world and it is not the same.

I have always thought I had a good sense of a person.  I have usually been right when judging a person to be good at heart when others dismissed them or sense someone's BS when others are blindsided by sweetness.  However, in a few instances, I have been proven that I can be very far off.  I am apparently not a great judge of character, at all.  I maintained a friendship with a person who was becoming a cruel racist, all for the sake of the memories and dedication to the friendship.  I have mistaken meekness and sadness as real when they masked a deep rooted selfishness and manipulation.  Some people I thought were cruel and shady have turned out to actually be nice and sincere.

Why is my inner human compass out of sorts?  I want to tell the people I despised that I am sorry if I gave attitude, but I just try to be nice and hope that makes up for it.  I want to tell the former friends who turned out to be cruel people to stop hurting me and others for selfish gain.  At times, I know that solitude is better than being with people who make you doubt yourself. I am not sure if people used to always be this selfish and cruel, but I have a hunch that is not the case.  I wonder if people are becoming more and more cruel and selfish these days, worried only about how things that happen in this world will affect them.  I saw it in my colleagues last year.  I see it in online conversations people have regarding politics, society, the economy, etc..  So, are people getting better at hiding who they truly are?  Or am I getting really bad at judging people?  I am leaning towards the latter.  I am opting to stick with my kids.