It’s hard to care when you get half credit on an essay because your margins aren’t correct.

It’s hard to give a shit when you get points of an art assignment for accident curving the corner of the paper.

It’s hard to want to try when the directions are confusing and the teacher refuses to answer “stupid” questions,

And it’s hard to believe a teacher would ever utter the words “stupid questions.”

It’s hard to want to learn when a test is an exact copy of the study guide—I have short-term photographic memory and a part time job; putting time to understand the material is low on my priority list.

It’s hard to pay attention when your teacher is on the fifth example of a problem everyone knows how to do.

It’s hard to get my hands to turn the wheel into the school parking lot when all I know is that this day will be like the past five—the boring, same old shit re-taught and reiterated, thrown at my uninterested ears.

It’s hard to express this to teachers without getting labeled disrespectful, ungrateful, or unruly.

But I know what it’s like to have a teacher that makes it easy to care.

I’ve seen them in action—they want you to understand, to feel passionate about something, and to love spending fifty minutes in a freezing classroom.

It’s hard to not sit back, scroll through my phone, eat a snack, listen to music, and study for another class when I shouldn’t be.

Because students can feel when a teacher doesn’t care, or when a teacher thinks they are superior to them, or when a teacher is out of steam and passion like the rest of us.

It’s hard to care when you spend three hours on an analysis and get it back with nothing but a check for getting the format right.