* Bitterly she smoked in the teachers' lounge and told me, the student teacher, "Never teach high school for more than five years."

I don't know. Clearly, her life wasn't going well, and she perceived these energetic and larval youth as prison bars.

It did make me think of an alternative culture where it would be easy for people to teach high school for five years. Go in and out, bringing the complexities of the great world to high school, and then the energy and problems of high school back to the great world.