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"Every single kid in this class been suspended at least once."

It was a fair claim, and honestly speaking, I knew the girl who said it might actually be right. At least for half a second, that's what I thought. A quiet voice beside me reminded me that that probably wasn't the case.

"I haven't."

The shy words came from one of the best students in the class, a hard work boy who never has any behavior problems. The two girls with whom I was speaking -- with whom I'd drifted so off topic from our classwork that I felt somewhat guilty continuing it and did so only because of a perceived need to explain some basic facts to some confused girls -- the two girls just looked at him. I jumped in.

"And in fact I can show you a whole class of students that have never been suspended." I had in mind my honors group, but times are changing, and being in an honors class no longer necessarily means perfect behavior, so they argued, tossing a couple of names at me. Knowing they were likely right, I persisted nonetheless in asserting that none of them had been suspended.

Finally, the girls turned to the fatalistic refrain of at-risk kids: "Well, that's them, not us."

"But it could be you," I suggested, and one would think I'd suggested that they could fly to the moons of Jupiter by their own power, such was the looks of disbelief.

"That ain't us!" they insisted.

I was on my way out to my car when the two little Muslim sisters (I knew this because they both cover their heads with scarves) passed me. I greeted them and somehow, we began talking. A group of their friends, all girls, gathered around us, all talking to me at almost the same time. I asked them where they're from, and one girl said that she's from Afghanistan.

"Do you speak Dari or Pashto at home?" I asked. Her jaw dropped.

"You know those?!"

"No, no, not how to speak them. I just know they exist. I know they're the primary languages of Afghanistan."

She smiled ear to ear: "We speak Pashto."

"I'm from Iran," another girl said. "I speak Persian at home."

"Oh -- Farsi, right? Isn't 'thank you' in Farsi 'Mersi'?" I asked.

Another jaw dropped.

"I just always found it strangely beautiful that it's a loan word from French."

"Do you speak French" the lone boy asked.

"Un peu," I responded, winking, hoping he wouldn't push me beyond my meager limits in the language.

But before that could happen, one of the young covered girls announced, "I'm Fatima!" They'd been telling me their names, and she finally got hers squeezed in.

"Oh, like the prophet Mohammed's daughter, right?" I asked.

Her eyes got enormous and she ran back into the classroom, presumably to tell someone.

The fact that I know these little tidbits seemed to me simply basic education about other cultures. I know Dari and Pashto were Afghan languages because of our country's involvement in that country and learning a little about it and its history at that point. I know "mersi" was one way in Farsi to say "thank you" because I sat next to an Iranian woman and her child on a flight from Charlotte to Munich in 2015 when I followed K and the kids to Poland a few weeks after they'd left. I know Mohammed's daughter was Fatima because I read parts of a book about the supposed apparitions of Mary at Fatima. I know a bit of French because I too two years of it in college. Just a few tidbits of knowledge about these girls' (and one boy's) language and culture, but it seemed to make their day.

So little to create so much.