Teacher Appreciation

The school year is coming to a close and I'm getting all sentimental. I'm really going to miss my kids over the next few months so I've been reading their yearbook messages and cards and my personal favorite, the paper flower charts that I strongly suggested they fill out for me during Teacher Appreciation Week.

Here are some of my favorite petals.

Sometimes I feel like they don't listen...

 

but they are clearly getting the key points,

and honestly singing might make absorbing new material even easier, who's to say?

Maybe I forced their hands a tad.

But you're always going to have your haters,

 

(PS...that's literally what my job is.)

and your students who forget what subject you teach,

and complain because you have, on occasion, been known to make students "do stuff," you monster.


But at the end of the day I think they wish me happiness...


...or something similar.

(I love how this response says "ideally she would have a boyfriend but I recognize that may be out of reach so let's shoot for a boyfriend equivalent." I appreciate that they're thinking critically about the reality of my potential and planning accordingly. I taught them how to do that.)

They don't always have the best ideas,


or the draw the right conclusions,


and sometimes they say strange things that also happen to be the meanest thing anyone has ever said to me.

But they also give me compliments,

and don't lie about my refusal to participate in corporal punishment.

(I love this response because I imagine a student thinking "hmm...something good I can say about my teacher..." and then they got nothing so they think "what is the bare minimum of success as an educator? well...she has yet to resort to physical violence." and this is where they ended up.)

So I do worry about them. Thanks to the Tide Pod Challenge part of my curriculum is now "if it's not food, don't eat it" and even that needed to be reviewed.

But I only worry because...

Finally...an interesting point, maybe I will try it some time.