Not fair.

One of my pupils was diagnosed with a brain tumor.

And I'm riddled with guilt because I've never been nice to him. Well, one of the voices in my head says: How could you have been? Because, let's be honest, he's one of those students that try to make it particularly hard to love them. When I first started out as a teacher (without a clue or proper preparation for what I might find), he made me dread the English classes he was in. He was continually disruptive, loud, throwing things, shouting abuse at other pupils, impossible to talk with - or, as we say: advice-resistant.

He wasn't alone in that. They had a nice little gang going in that class who, quite simply, turned every lesson into a lesson for me in how not to react ever again, how not to lose control, how to establish silence, let alone a productive atmosphere. Most days I failed spectacularly. Anyhow, he was always in the middle of all disruptions, so we spent most of our time me breathing down his neck, giving out to him for doing this and not doing that and him testing me to see how far he could go before I'd explode again. As I said, early days, and I'd like to think I've got something more of a grip on things by now. Most days.

Then there's the other voice in my head. The one that says, early days or not, you should have known better. You should have paid better attention. You should have realized he couldn't help it. [Aside: Because none of them can. They're children, at the mercy of adults' whims or goodwill, thrown into a world that, for many of them, holds in store unemployment, poverty, domestic violence, estranged parents, lack of integration, lack of social stability...the list goes on and on. It's your job to give them structure. Something to rely on. And maybe teach them a thing or two along the way.] And you should have known. You should have guessed. More than that, you knew for a fact that something was wrong with him. He's been seeing social workers, doctors and psychologists for as long as you've known him. And they ran tests and yet more tests and came up with therapy and a lack of iron.

That was two years ago. I had lost sight of him since because I no longer teach that class (and, here's more guilt: am glad of it). Then yesterday I picked up his name in the staff room and asked his class teacher what was going on. So he told me. Things had gotten gradually worse over the last years. The boy's mood swings had become so extreme that he'd "explode" completely in class and then in turn be so exhausted he skived off early every day, went home and fell asleep for up to 6 hours straight. But since his GP seemed quite happy with his "lack of iron" diagnosis, nothing happened for ages. Up until last week. I don't know how the mother convinced the doctors and insisted on a CT scan. I only know that they got the results two days after the boy and his class came back from their class trip to the sea. And his teacher told me how the boy hadn't been sure whether he should go on the trip in the first place (what with all the anxiety and the state he was in), but that when the results were in he told his teacher "I'm glad I went and had this week of fun!"

He's a skinny, blond boy of just 15 and I feel I never did him justice. My heart goes out to him, standing chatting to his mates in the school yard, scrawnier than ever, eager to fit in. But I mustn't let it show. I mustn't be nicer to him than before because he doesn't want anyone to know. He never had much of a chance in the first place. And now maybe he has none at all.