Appreciation

Last week at our staff appreciation lunch each staff member received cards written by the students. An exercise carried out by our parent-guardian organization, the ones I received this year made me smile and chuckle. It was interesting to read comments to me as a teacher and others as an administrator for the first time. 

This student's spelling is not great but this made me laugh. I think it might be one of my ELL students who wrote it, so it's ok the spelling is off. 

Even though it sounds a bit generic and like it's from a student who doesn't really know me, that's ok. I'll take it. 

I think this one is from one of the recently arrived students. This is a girl from El Salvador who traveled here with some older cousins. Once she got over the border, she spent 2 months in an ICE detention center. Finally, she made it here and is living with her aunt. She left behind a brother and her parents so she could come get a good education here. In El Salvador her parents couldn't afford to send her to school. 

This is the only comment I got that had a student's name attached to it. I wish the others had had names on them so I could thank the students. 

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Wish I knew who the "we" is in this one. 

And then there was this note. I have a feeling I know who this was from.....a young 7th grader who needs frequent (daily) reminders to take off her hat. 

All great reminders that what we do every day is appreciated by someone at some point. They often don't tell us out loud, they may even act completely nasty as they push us away, especially in middle school. One thing I have learned over the years is to not take it personally when that happens. It's almost never really about the teacher. It's usually about something else: feeling inadequate, some friend drama, family problems.

Teaching is weird in a way: you put all this work in, and you often won't know the end results. We just have to keep on doing what we do, knowing that we are affecting and influencing kids' lives every day, whether or not we are thanked for it. 

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