I knew I didn't have the patience to be a teacher.

Host: The schoolyard was quiet now, long after the final bell had faded into memory. The sunlight slanted through the classroom windows, catching the dust like a thousand tiny fireflies suspended in time. The chalkboard still held traces of the day — half-erased equations, doodles in the margins, a lonely “Don’t forget your homework!” scrawled in tired handwriting.

At a desk near the back, Jack sat with a cup of lukewarm coffee, staring at the board as if it were a confession. Jeeny leaned against the teacher’s desk, her coat draped over a chair, watching him with that familiar mix of amusement and compassion that only she could balance.

The air was filled with the faint hum of fluorescent lights — the same hum that had survived generations of teachers, each one dreaming of changing lives, or at least making it through another Monday.

Jeeny: (smiling) “Quinta Brunson once said, ‘I knew I didn’t have the patience to be a teacher.’ I think that’s one of the most honest things I’ve ever heard.”

Jack: (half-laughing) “Honesty or surrender?”

Jeeny: “Both. The best kind of honesty is surrender. It means you know your limits.”

Jack: “Or it means you’ve stopped trying.”

Jeeny: “No. It means you’ve started respecting the people who can do what you can’t.”

Host: The sunlight shifted again, moving slowly across the floor, touching the empty desks like a quiet memory. The room, though silent, still held echoes — the laughter, the frustration, the thousand small battles of people trying to teach and be taught.

Jack: “I always thought patience was a kind of myth. People talk about it like it’s natural — like some are born with endless reservoirs of calm. But patience isn’t peace, it’s restraint. It’s the art of holding the explosion just long enough to pretend you meant to light a candle.”

Jeeny: “Maybe that’s what teaching is — lighting candles while pretending your hands don’t shake.”

Jack: (nodding) “Yeah. I could never do it. Kids asking questions you can’t answer, parents asking for miracles, the system chewing everyone up and calling it progress.”

Jeeny: “And yet, the ones who stay — they’re the quiet heroes. The ones who measure their victories in inches and years.”

Jack: (softly) “It’s a kind of sainthood, isn’t it? To wake up every day and walk into chaos for the sake of someone else’s tomorrow.”

Jeeny: “Exactly. And Brunson’s honesty — it’s not rejection. It’s reverence. She’s saying, I see the mountain, and I know I’m not built to climb it.”

Host: The light outside dimmed, turning golden, like a slow exhale. A child’s laughter echoed faintly from somewhere down the street — distant, untamed, alive.

Jack: (smiling faintly) “You think patience is something you can learn?”

Jeeny: “You can practice it, but you can’t fake it. Patience born from love feels different than patience born from obligation.”

Jack: “So you think teachers love?”

Jeeny: “They have to. Otherwise the weight would crush them. No one stays in this job for the pay or the praise. They stay because they can’t stop caring — even when the world doesn’t make it easy.”

Jack: “And what about people like me? The impatient ones? The ones who lose their temper halfway through the lesson?”

Jeeny: “Maybe your lesson isn’t in teaching others — maybe it’s in learning yourself.”

Jack: (with a short laugh) “You sound like a motivational poster.”

Jeeny: (smiling) “Maybe the posters were right all along. We just outgrew the fonts.”

Host: The lightbulb overhead flickered, humming for a moment before steadying again — the small persistence of something ordinary refusing to give up.

Jack: “You know, I had this teacher once — seventh grade. She was strict. The kind who made you rewrite essays until they bled truth. I hated her at the time. Thought she was cruel.”

Jeeny: “And now?”

Jack: “Now I realize she was the first person who ever believed I could be more than I was pretending to be. Patience didn’t mean letting me coast — it meant holding the line until I learned to stand.”

Jeeny: “That’s what real patience does. It doesn’t just wait — it shapes.”

Jack: “You think she knew that?”

Jeeny: “Oh, she knew. Teachers always know. They just never get to see the final draft.”

Host: The silence that followed was tender, almost reverent — the kind of silence that belongs to gratitude too fragile to name aloud.

Jack: “So Brunson didn’t have the patience to be a teacher. Maybe she didn’t need to. Maybe she teaches in other ways.”

Jeeny: “Exactly. Not everyone’s meant for the classroom. Some teach through laughter, stories, art, mistakes. The world needs all kinds of lessons.”

Jack: (thoughtful) “You know, I always envied people who had that kind of calm. The ones who could look at chaos and still smile.”

Jeeny: “Maybe calm isn’t their nature. Maybe it’s their choice.”

Jack: (quietly) “And maybe impatience is just love in a hurry.”

Jeeny: (smiling) “That’s beautiful, Jack. Maybe that’s all teaching really is — love slowing down long enough to be understood.”

Host: The last light of the sun reached the blackboard, catching the faint white dust of chalk — words erased but not forgotten.

Jack stood, walked to the front of the room, and ran his fingers across the chalk tray, the fine powder clinging to his skin like memory.

Jack: (softly) “You ever think about how teachers never really know what they’ve changed?”

Jeeny: “That’s the beauty of it. They don’t need to. They plant seeds and walk away — trusting the world to do the watering.”

Jack: (turning toward her) “You think you’d have the patience to do this job?”

Jeeny: (smiling sadly) “Some days, yes. Most days, no. But I like to think the best teachers aren’t just in classrooms. Sometimes they’re just the ones who listen long enough to help you hear yourself.”

Host: The light outside faded completely, leaving only the glow from the hallway and the soft hum of the fluorescent lights above.

In that stillness, the room felt sacred — a quiet temple to patience, imperfection, and the slow, invisible work of shaping souls.

And as they stood in the glow, Quinta Brunson’s words echoed in the air,
not as confession,
but as truth worn like humility:

that knowing your limits isn’t weakness,
it’s wisdom —

that not everyone can stand in front of a classroom,
but we can all learn something from those who do,

and that sometimes, the greatest lesson
isn’t in teaching others,
but in learning how to wait
for ourselves to grow.