One of my students is due to have her baby any day.

She has been out of school on bed rest. She's fifteen.

I just discovered this week that three other of my students are freshly pregnant and in nine months will be three more fifteen year old mothers.

As I tell the kids to open their journals and start jotting down anything they have on their mind(I call this the "burp-up." The stuff you have to get out of the system before you start writing the good stuff)the kids are feverishly writing. As they do this I notice the empty desk where the ready to give birth girl usually sits. For the previous three weeks she had been sitting there with a belly the size of a watermelon and getting up to pee every seven seconds.

But in my mind, she's still there.

A week ago we were chatting in the hall when I asked her if she knew what the baby was and if she was excited to have it.

"It's a boy and no."

"You're not excited to have it?"

"No. I don't want it."

"You don't! How come?"

"She looks at me and I swear I see her answer in her face. The way she still looks like a little kid that doesn't even have her driver's license. Her eyes just said: "Dude, you know I'm only fifteen and about to have a baby boy and have to take care of it while doing my homework and that's even if I decide to stay in school."

"I dunno." She says as she heads out the door to go home.

When people ask me how teaching is going I smile and tell them it has changed my life. Those who have never taught say to me: "Wow, it must have. I mean, helping all of those kids trying to get somewhere with their lives must be so darn inspiring."

But those who have taught will know the real answer. Teaching is selfish. Sure, it's about passing your brains on to someone else. But, these kids are learning half the stuff that they are teaching me. Sometimes when I get home after the long day and I am in my apartment I imagine, I try to imagine, their lives as my life. I imagine having a baby that I have to pick up from a babysitter. I imagine having to figure out dinner for a little mouth. I imagine having to dodge the gang banging streets and taking the long ways to avoid the drug dealers. I even try to imagine being fifteen and having to deal with all these things.

And I can't.

And what I am learning is that what I am trying to be is not a teacher. I am trying to be a super hero. In my dream world I would swoop in and scoop up all the kids and start them fresh. Show them they don't have to have a baby to prove to a guy that she really loves him. I would erase their beliefs of what their futures should be and replace them with dreams and aspirations. I would be a different type of teacher. I wouldn't teach them how to write a poem. I would teach them how to live the best life they could ever live.

But what these kids don't know: They are the real superheroes. My superheroes. They must have powers up their sleeves to survive all they have to live through. That's the only way I can imagine being in their places because that's the only way they have to be able to make it...because...

I don't know how they do it.
I just don't know how they will do it.