Completely Consumed

By kids and lessons and disfunction and the effort that it takes to ignore what they go home to so that I can sleep at night...
Some of them aren't going to get it. Because they can't yet, or because they don't want to, or because I'm not the person to help them get it.
I'm supposed to move on, and realize that the energy I spend on them could be spent on the kid sitting next to them or at another table...the kid who would get it if I spent my time with them.
But walking away feels like giving up and I'm left feeling eternally guilty for the ones I didn't reach.

He cried today when I disciplined him. He has the cognitive abilities of a 3 year old. He didn't understand, and I knew it. But I had a point to make to all of the other 8 year olds who make a hobby of walking all over adults.
I kept him after class, and as tears ran down his face I found myself holding back tears of my own.
"I'll make better choices, I promise," he blubbered.
"I know you will," I said, and I stopped. There was so much more I could have said, but the lump in my throat stopped me and I was left with only the commute home to think about how it could have gone better.

There's so much more I could write about. A niece that never stops growing...a relationship that continues to grow each and every day. A future that is quickly approaching and a city whose never ending sounds give me so much life.
But they're all just background right now...soft music that plays while all 25 of my hooligans scream at me to save them.