Listen, I don’t have thin skin. If I did, I would teach fourth grade and cry along with my students when the spider died at the end of Charlotte’s Web. Anyone can teach kids; I teach young adults. And I introduce them to their mentor, who will decide their fate: New York’s most haunted forever teen, Holden Caulfield.
By introducing decades of students to the philosopher in the backward red hunting cap, I’ve presented them with their next step into adulthood. Most English students make one of two choices: Either they love Holden and go on to have intense, fleeting, and passionate careers in fields like English or theater, or they realize they have good relationships with their mothers.
These past few years, however, I’ve noticed a startling trend: ambivalence.


