Fifty-five-year-old middle school teacher Mr. Kermit has spent the last 27 years in a haze of self-loathing and doubt. At the beginning of his teaching career, he wanted to change the lives of his students. Now with one school year standing between him and early retirement, he spends his time “counting the nanoseconds until I can kiss the classroom and everybody in it goodbye” (13).

Mr. Kermit shows what happens to a person when they give up and let a negative event from their past overtake them. Unfairly blamed for a cheating incident, Mr. Kermit lost his confidence and then made the choice not to rebuild himself. Instead, he allowed himself to slide into apathy and fear, continuing to work in a job he hated because he didn’t believe he could do anything different.

Only through the intervention of a younger, more engaged teacher next door, and through slowly coming to see the students in room 117 as individual learners in need of his wisdom as support does Mr. Kermit slowly come out of his funk and grow into the kind of excellent teacher he was always meant to be.