Gratitude

Today, one of my students who has struggled all year (but never gave up!) brought me a little purple envelope with my name on it today.

Inside was a thank you card. She thanked me for providing her with the opportunity to learn even though she had never felt comfortable with math in her life. She also said that she had learned a LOT this year.

What a treasure! I'll be saving that one in my "hope" file.

Student visitors

Yesterday, I heard from another teacher that I student I had four years ago (as a junior) had come back to visit and get advice from our "career center". The other teacher said that he had tattoos all down one arm. She stopped to chat with him for a moment and learned that he enlisted in the marines right out of high school. Six weeks after enlisting, he was deployed to Iraq!

She asked him what he thought about our school now and he said, "This place is heaven. When I was here, I had no idea."

I wish he could talk to all of our students.

Being missed

Over the past two days, I've been out in curriculum planning meetings. Since I was not on-campus, I was also not there for the after school tutoring I normally do.

I returned today and manned my post in our school's tutoring center. The kids made me feel really important and greatly missed during my absence.

With tomorrow being "Teacher Appreciation Day", I feel like I've already gotten the best gift possible!

Will the world hear it?

New York Times Article (04/25/2008)

Since I began teaching, I've wondered what the logic was in teaching a concept through "story problems". I've always understood the logic of calling on students to perform a concept on a story problem, but teaching it that way seems utterly ridiculous.

Now there's some research to support my intuition.