Knight in Shining Armor

JB is one of the few students I had last year for tutoring whom I also now teach in a regular classroom setting, and thus he is very dear to me. However, I was pretty sure that he wasn't too thrilled with this fact. He seems to get more tardies in my class than anyone else, he is continually having to "sit down for a chat" with me, and I've ruined more than one of his afternoons doing his favorite thing: inter-murals because of a late or missing assignment. Nope. Pretty sure I didn't rank too high on his "Most Beloved Teachers" List.

And yet, today he melted my heart (and I hope he never reads this blog to be embarrassed by it). We had a guest speaker who was trying to make the point about tribal warfare and belonging.

"Say, JE over here attacks IS. Well IS's clan is going to rise up under the leadership of their chieftain and attack JE's clan, right?" Many nods. "But now Ms. Custer comes in, and she doesn't belong to any of your clans. She's an outsider. If she oversteps her boundaries and is under attack, who's going to stand up and protect her? Nobody."

That's when JB raised his hand. "I would."

Sigh. :-)