I try to start each class with a quote. I hang a new one up on the board each morning when I arrive at school. They come from books that have entertained me with page-turning plots and enlightened me with revelations about the human condition, books that have cheered me up, challenged my beliefs, and captured my imagination. Today the quote was from Abraham Verghese’s brilliant novel Cutting for Stone. “We are all fixing what is broken,” it reads. “It is the task of a lifetime. We'll leave much unfinished for the next generation.” When I read it to my first period class, a room filled with bright and curious ninth graders, I could not make it through the short quote without my voice breaking. I had to stop and regroup so that I did not simply start bawling right there in front of my students. When I picked out that quote in June, in preparation for this school year, I saw it as uplifting and positive. I read it as words of hope and progress. We are all actively fixing what