A Thing of Beauty  

I rapped sharply on the desk and told my students to complete their grammar sheets for homework. I then instructed them to take out a blank piece of paper.

There was no mistaking the zing of surprise. My 22 students were caught off guard; this very much veered from the well-trodden script. Tuesdays after recess were always devoted to the intricacies of English grammar.

But hey, anything was better than parsing sentences.

I briefly glanced through an old book of poems lying in the teacher’s desk drawer and selected one at random. “A Thing of Beauty,” I intoned, “by Lee H. Richardson.”