I love reading your writing about teaching. I too was the nice, patient, fun teacher. And it was hard to balance between giving students the benefit of the doubt and not sending the wrong message. I kind of did a pendulum swing from too permissive to possibly too authoritarian. It took time to find that "middle."

If it helps, I never regreted granting grace to the student who had problems the rest of the class didn't know about. But I did sometimes regret the immediate harshness.

Teaching is a tough gig for a tender heart. But those are the teachers we need.