Eighth-grade public school students will learn their high school assignments on Thursday, and SchoolBook’s teacher-blogger writes that many of her students have already forgotten which schools they requested. It’s not that they’re forgetful, she writes. “It’s that they made their choices without a lot of thought or commitment. They didn’t go to countless open houses or pore over the thick high school directory. They have also been told that many of the better schools are unlikely to accept them.” Nevertheless, it usually “turns out O.K.,” she says. “And ‘O.K.’ is what they’ve grown to accept.”

A middle school teacher writes: ‘In order to maintain sanity you have to accept the feeling of not being done at the end of the day. You have to grow accustomed to the to-do list that generates in your head as you lie down for bed — a parent that needs to be called, a referral that you have to write, a retest that has to be administered. At the end of the day, you just aren’t ever done. But that isn’t to say that there aren’t wonderful moments of absolute satisfaction.’

A middle school teacher writes about one of her students: ‘The true danger of bullying is the way that it changes kids. After weeks of feeling defensive and guarded, Rocky began to hide her sweet softness. Enough of this transformation in children, and the environment of a school is changed.’

In her latest blog post, Laura Klein writes: In the past, I dreamed of plucking my students from their miserable homes and finding solutions to their problems. I felt powerful and capable, as though I would be able to offer them something better. Now I know that the best I might do is to just be there when they return from their holiday break, offering them something steady and certain.

A Bronx middle school teacher says: We want to be understanding, and we don’t want to be the one who cuts off students’ opportunities. But do excuses really provide support? At what point do these crutches become crippling?

Children’s misbehavior and the use of suspensions can leave adults in particularly tricky territory.

A middle-school teacher writes: Often I read a child’s paper, or talk to him or her, and am startled at the interpretation of events in his or her life. It is as though no one has explained the world to these children, and so they try to understand it based on what they can see. We must remember to ask, or we will never know.

The mother had spent her summer dragging herself from one office to another, speaking in broken English, begging that her daughter be allowed to change high schools. She was sent away, time after time, told there was nothing that could be done. She felt confused, dismissed, helpless. A middle school teacher tells her student’s story and asks: Why keep attempting to navigate the jungle that is the high school choice process when we should be creating a road?

After four years, a teacher has learned that the parents who are there at the beginning are still there at the end, and the parents who did not give their phone numbers in sixth grade still do not give them in the eighth. Her suggestion: Maybe we should stop trying to transform parents, when it is their children who still have room to change.

A fourth-year teacher in the Bronx writes about what draws her back to school each year. It’s the list, she says. ‘I have no control over who is on that list. Sometimes you get kids who are angels, and sometimes you get kids named Angel who resemble Lucifer. It doesn’t matter … inside each of them lies a world of possibility and potential waiting to be unlocked.’