On occasion, teachers have those magic moments when the world seems to stop for a second and we realize that we are making a difference in the life of a student. Something happens that brings a tear to our eye or makes us sit a little taller and take pride in an experience that we've helped create that we know will change one child or a group of children forever. I had one of those moments this morning.

Every Friday, my English class reads the Scholastic Scope magazine. There is always a classroom play that we try to do first, and then we continue through the stories and activities in the rest of the magazine. This morning, we read the play "Freedom Writers," which is based on the 1999 novel and subsequent movie that I had never heard of. The movie stars Hilary Swank as teacher Erin Gruwell who shows students the power of their words and help them reject gang life. The teacher uses Homer's The Odyssey to introduce them to the concept of overcoming obstacles on the journey of life. She also uses The Diary of Anne Frank to illustrate how racial injustice and gang violence can hurt society. She then assigns the students a journaling assignment - for the rest of the year, they keep a journal that can be private or shown to Ms. Gruwell. She tells them she will look at everyone's journal to make sure they are doing the assignment, but she will only read them if they are left in a cabinet in the room. And so no one else will read them, the cabinet will be locked when she is not in the room.

After reading the play, we had about twenty minutes of class time left. I decided to have my students write a journal entry about an obstacle they had overcome. This could be something I would read or something they could take home and throw away. Either way, I would check to make sure they wrote something.

After fifteen minutes, I decided to kill the remaining five minutes of class by allowing the students to read their journal entries if they chose. Unlike other times that I have asked them to share orally, I told them I would not give bonus points - I was simply offering the opportunity and there was no bribery involved.

One student shared his story of getting his four-wheeler stuck in a muddy pond. It was a typical middle school boy story about making a foolish decision and somehow having fun almost tearing up a piece of equipment. And of course, the other boys thought that was cool. The other student to volunteer was a girl - not a popular girl, but one who is often rejected by her classmates. Not the brightest student in the class, but one who struggles to pull off a passing grade. Not a well spoken student with eloquent writing, but one whose speech is hard to understand. Even with those obstacles already against her, she had the nerve to volunteer to walk to the front of the room, stand in front of twenty-six of her peers, and pour her heart out in a way that most kids her age wouldn't dream.

She started by sharing that her mom gave her to her aunt and uncle when she was one, but later changed her mind and took her back so she could "get her check for cigarette money." Her real dad was never around, and although her mom was there, she was never available for her. "...all I felt like I was was just something to give her the name 'mom'." She never had nice clothes, she wore shirts that were too big for her and shoes that were too small. In first grade, she was taken away from her mom. There was a large fight and she recalls having to tell the police officer how her mom would see things "on the wall and everything else."

She remembers how two elementary teachers helped her through that time in her life, and how she never knew where she would be going each day after school. When she was asked to decide where she wanted to live, she chose her aunt and uncle, and after four years of legal battles, she was finally adopted. She closed by saying, "I am happy where I'm staying now with my aunt and uncle. They are my new mom and dad."

As she walked away from the podium to return to her seat, everyone clapped and no one spoke a word. She had cried through the whole story, and I have a feeling some of them had, too. I sat on the other side of the room, smiling on the outside and crying on the inside. I was so excited that she was sharing her most difficult struggle with the rest of the class, but I was hurting because I could not imagine the pain she had suffered throughout her childhood. I knew that sharing her story wasn't easy for her to do, but I could just imagine the freedom she was feeling by getting it off her mind and allowing her peers to share it with her.

After class, a few girls came up to her to give her a hug and say something to her. Some of them even walked with her through the hall as she went to her next class. I don't know that she had ever shared any of that with her classmates. Something we have to deal with in public schools is the vast spectrum of personal experience that students bring to the classroom. We work with kids from every walk of life.

In the play that we read in class, one student wrote in her journal, "I'm envious of kids with fathers. I hope they don't take for granted all the little things he does like say 'Good morning' or 'Goodnight.'" Or just asking what they did in school that day. That would be the perfect Cinderella story for me - no glass slippers, just a 'How was school today?'" I wonder what that girl in my class was thinking as those words were read. I wonder how many others feel the same way. And I wonder how many of them hear "How was school today?" and think that having that $100 pair of shoes or that new iPod is their Cinderella story.

Teachers have the best job in the world - we get to help mold lives forever. Whether it's those second grade teachers who helped a struggling girl cope with being taken from her family or the eighth grade teacher encouraging her to share her story with the class, we never know when we'll have that opportunity to make a difference. I'm glad I had that opportunity this morning - I'll never forget it.