January Semester

I sit in a solitary classroom
Bulletin boards stripped of embellishment and showiness
The late January sun shining in the shades
I am gazing at my computer.

Names surmounting to twenty-nine times four stare back at me.
So full of stories and suffering,
So full of assurance and self-reproach.
Each wonderful in their own way, but all only children.

"It's a new semester,
surely they won't hate me?
I'm not surly, but I am sunshine."
These sighs try to satiate the strain on my spirit.
I am only four years their senior with stresses not unlike themselves,
but the first year of teaching ages the teacher beyond their years.