One of my students had written wistfully of a dream-school that would have 'windows with trees in them.'

'Why did you fail me? I didn't do nothing!' The reply, of course, is: 'That's just it.'

My words never reached him; I could almost hear them drop, one by one, like so many pebbles against a closed window.

Paul asks how I would have handled a love letter from a student. I don't know - by talking, maybe, by listening. I don't know. How sad that we don't hear each …