After a student maliciously burned his arm, Kirk Allen thought his classroom days were over. But walking away proved impossible as it proved how much he loved teaching.

Allen, a business economics, financial math and word processing teacher, was helping two Poughkeepsie high school students working at a bank of computers when he smelled smoke.

Knowing they were both heavy cigarette smokers, Allen assumed the smell came from one of them.

It wasn't.

"I looked one more time to the left because that's where the smell was the strongest," Allen recalled. That's when he saw a student crouched below the desk, holding a lighter to his arm. The stench Allen was smelling was his own flesh and arm hairs burning.

Allen, who had taught in the district for six years, disarmed the student and ordered him to leave the classroom. "I must have said, 'You lit me on fire; I can't believe you lit me on fire' like 100 times," Allen said.

He filed a police report the day of the assault and learned later that the student, from a group home, had a history of mental health problems.

After informing an administrator of the incident, Allen was sent home. "I didn't feel safe," he said. "I had a kid in my class who obviously had issues."

The next day Allen tried to carry on as usual. Colleagues were supportive, but administrators insisted he drop the charges against the student.

"I felt violated and like I was getting zero support," Allen said. He refused to drop the charges, and at the end of that year he was laid off — due to budget cuts.

Allen, who was a graduate of the school where he no longer had a job, figured he was in the wrong field.

"I had family in Miami, and at that point I just didn't want to teach," he said. "I needed time to figure out what I wanted to do."

Inspired by former students, he wrote Save Your Financial Self, Avoid Financial Mistakes, a self-help book on personal finances. But in a little more than a year, the classroom called him back.

"I really missed it," Allen said. "(The kids) called me all the time and would ask if I was coming back."

He decide to return "and help the kids who needed me. Teaching and helping kids," he said, "is one of the most rewarding things in my life."

Last September Allen started teaching at the Ketcham High School in nearby Wappingers.

"I needed to be someplace where I could feel at home," he explained. "It's my first year back and I'm a little rusty but I love what I do. For the 28 kids in front of me, I want to be the best teacher I can be."

"Kirk Allen's ebullience is contagious," said Pasquale Delli Carpini, president of the Wappingers Congress of Teachers. "I see him as a great asset in the classroom and in the community, including his service in the U.S. Army National Guard."

Allen said, "Teaching sometimes makes you feel great stress, but also great pride and joy."

— Clarisse Butler Banks