This was the prompt: If could relive one of your past ages, which age would you choose?

It’s a prompt I assigned to my college level English class. It was in-class writing assignment that called for a hand-written paragraph. It was more about teaching paragraph structure than it was about the actual content. The results were beautifully written, and once again, through my students’ writing, I was allowed entry into their personal lives, to catch glimpses of who they are and who they were.

I have them for an hour. The class that comes in after them is made of my Opportunity Program students. They are with me for the remainder of the day. Most high school students have six teachers. Mine have one: me.

I thought it would be a good idea to assign them the same prompt my Hartnell College students wrote about. These students are harder, more street, more edgy, more to themselves.

Here’s what Darlene wrote:

Ages

If I could relive any age, I would like to be seven again. First of all, in that time, I was innocent, smart, and kind with everyone, even if I didn’t know them, and I was really sociable with anyone. Whenever I would see anyone bullied, I would always try defending them even if they were older than me. Also, I never had anything to worry about. I was just innocent and kind with everyone. Another reason I would like to be seven again is because my parents would be happy and never argue. Before my dad started any drugs, we would go out a lot more. I have many good memories with them that I would like to relive so I could appreciate the good times we had together before everything changed. We would go to San Francisco a lot and take pictures together at the Red Bridge from San Francisco. My parents would always be hugging and happy and so I would be happy seeing them like that, wishing I could see it one last time. But I don’t think I will see it again. I hope I could give my future children a good dad and a better life so that they don’t grow up the way I am.