Shawna has a Tiger's eyes and an infatuation of anything Hello!Kitty.

She is capricious. Canny. Ever-changing.

This child has one of the most beautiful smiles I have ever seen.

One moment she will happily tell you about how she beat down another girl at school because she was "disrespecting me."

Then her face will change into a micro-burst storm cloud, the kind apt at throwing ball lightening before she sinks into herself refusing to look at you or to speak.

Shawna is my first student.

She is the reason I chose to leave the sidelines, put down my reporter's notebook, and enter the wars as a soldier.

But I am not entering our ranks to fight in Afghanistan or Iraq.

I have become a teacher.

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At first glance, there is nothing about Shawna that is inspiring. Nothing remarkable and everything that is all too ordinary in the measure of children found in my city's public school system.

Shawna is slender and growing taller.

At ten years old,  she is a reed waiting to be plucked so she can vibrate.

She delights in bendy bracelets and girlish games on the computer.

Shawna crumples her homework assignments in her pockets and loathes our Hooked on Phonics book as only a child can - fiercely and resolutely.

My Shawna can hardly read beyond simple words. She struggles with "can't," and "jam."

To do basic math she resorts to her fingers or we work with crayons and number lines.

She copes as one has to.

And she is inclined to angry outbursts as frustration boils inside her.

It's not easy to be at the first grade level when you spend eight hours a day in a fourth grade classroom.

One might ask why a child such as Shawna is so behind. Is it a learning disability? Poverty? Inattentive and ineffective teachers? Lack of motivation? Lack of support at home?

I can tell you it is a combination of these things.

And it is a combination that morphs into a dogged hopelessness and understanding of the sheer pointlessness of learning.

This is what Shawna and I battle each week. One hour a week as an outlet from a life of increasing frustration that no child of ten years old in this nation should understand.

Shawna sees no point.

Her progress is so miniscule - the ability to read "the" or being able to add two plus two without fingers - that she must think, "Why waste my time? I could be playing dress-up on the computer."

Not so long ago, after nearly half an hour of silence and angry looks, I asked Shawna if she thought I would tell her that she was making progress when she wasn't. I asked if she thought I would lie to her about that.

The little girl looked at me, jaw set. Dark eyes smoldering.

"Yes."

I won't lie and claim that I have always kept hope at the end of such sessions.

There have -  and I know there will be - times I believe the battle may be lost.

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This story is all too common in the Education War. And make no mistake. 'War' is exactly what I mean.

It may become the truly defining struggle of our time - more so than any feat of arms, any battle against a foreign enemy.

Our enemy has closed in upon us and has broken through the gates.

That enemy is ignorance.

It bred by an education system stymied by unacknowledged class angst and a general apathy in our culture to education. It feeds on disputes between reformers. It is nurtured by bureaucracies more interested in their continued existence than the good they were established to perform.

Students like Shawna are too often condemned to learn the stunning, horrific truth that there is no 'Superman.'

There is nothing but the same cycle educational neglect and disappointment that leads our nation down a path of devolution not seen since before the invention of the printing press.

It is a grim future we face if all the universal learning gains we have come by since literacy spread beyond the cloister come to a screeching halt; or our ability to do math is reduced to dependence on a calculator; or the inability of our elected officials to correctly reference our nation's history in public statements shapes the political future.

This is a war and I cannot say yet if it is one that can be won.

That story remains to be fully written.

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As for Shawna and for me, our stories in some ways are both ending and beginning.

For her, her time in one of my city's worst schools is coming to an end.

Through persistence and a great deal of will exercised by her family and other helping hands including mine, she has been accepted to one of the few charter schools where students are making the leaps needed to catch up and thrive academically. The school is targeted specifically at students like her.

At this school, it is my hope she will get the help and attention she needs.

She started her first day of summer school today.

Her path may not be certain and it may never be a Lifetime Movie of the Week.

But at least for the moment there is the hope of something brighter. The hope this one child may learn to write and read, may get the education circumstances beyond her control have denied her.

And it is a hope that has been delivered on, not just promised never to appear.

As for me, there is also an end and a beginning soon to come.

Next week marks my last week as a journalist.

Next month,  I will stand in my first classroom with students not unlike my Shawna and take my place in the battle line.

*Names have been changed to protect the identities of those mentioned in this post.