This:
"I’m just a student I don’t think I have any good advice to give you but not to change. You are the coolest teacher I have ever had. You are so funny and happy all the time and you being happy always make me happy. You really care about your students and you invest in them making sure they do their best. You try and learn something new about everyone every day. You care enough to want to talk make their life and day better than it was. Those traits make a great teacher, that’s what you are, most definitely.
THANK YOU! I couldn’t have asked for a better year, I’m glad I wasn’t put in advanced language otherwise I wouldn’t have you as a teacher. I wouldn’t have had the experience of having a favorite teacher. We always do new and unique things in your class, it’s never boring. I wish you could be my teacher next year. I feel like I can talk to you about anything and you would understand. I hope you have fun at [our school]. I know I did."
Sorry. Some things are too good to keep to myself.
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"If the angel deigns to come, it will be because you have convinced her, not by your tears, but by your humble resolve to be always beginning." Rainer Maria Rilke
tutto di me
- teach people not books
- Second year educator; social justice minded; sworn enemy of teacher shoes everywhere; figuring out how to do what I do as best as I possibly can, without losing myself in the process.
sagacity
"Our lives begin to end the day that we become silent about things that matter."
Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Choice is illusory to the degree it represents the expectations of others. While all transition involves change, not all change results in transition."
Paulo Freire, Education for Critical Consciousness
"'Curiosity never killed this cat.' That's what I'd like as my epitaph."
Studs Terkel
"Whenever I am asked to do a good thing, I say yes right away."
Maya Angelou
"A well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people."
James Madison
"I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing / than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance."
e.e. cummings
"As the least drop of wine tinges the whole goblet, so the least particle of truth colors our whole lives. It is never isolated, or simply added as treasure to our stock. When any real progress is made, we unlearn and learn anew what we thought we knew before."
Henry David Thoreau, "Winter"
"As long as we continue to mindlessly defer to institutions that have themselves begun to cynically drop any pretence of being moral, just, or respectable - why should the government listen? it's doing just fine."
Arundhati Roy
"The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crises, maintain their neutrality."
Dante Alighieri
" But don't worry, I am not the bread and the knife. / You are still the bread and the knife. / You will always be the bread and the knife, / not to mention the crystal goblet and--somehow-- the wine."
Billy Collins
"If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?"
Albert Einstein
"The broadest and most prevalent error requires the most disinterested virtue to sustain it. . . Those who, while they disapprove of the character and measure of a government, yield to it their allegiance and support are undoubtedly its most conscientious supporters, and so frequently the most serious obstacles to reform."
Henry David Thoreau, "Civil Disobedience"
"'Well, how can you talk without a brain?'
'I don't know, but some people without brains do an awful lot of talking, don't they?'"
Dorothy & Scarecrow,
The Wizard of Oz
"Poetry (and now my voice is rising) / is not all love, love, love, / and I'm sorry the dog died. / Poetry (here I hear myself the loudest) / is the human voice, / and are we not of interest to each other?"
Elizabeth Alexander
"But plans are one thing and fate another. When they coincide, success results. Yet success mustn't be considered the absolute. It is questionable, for that matter, whether success is an adequate response to life. Success can eliminate as many options as failure. "
Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues
"Seed hope. Flower peace."
Daniel Berrigan
Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Choice is illusory to the degree it represents the expectations of others. While all transition involves change, not all change results in transition."
Paulo Freire, Education for Critical Consciousness
"'Curiosity never killed this cat.' That's what I'd like as my epitaph."
Studs Terkel
"Whenever I am asked to do a good thing, I say yes right away."
Maya Angelou
"A well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people."
James Madison
"I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing / than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance."
e.e. cummings
"As the least drop of wine tinges the whole goblet, so the least particle of truth colors our whole lives. It is never isolated, or simply added as treasure to our stock. When any real progress is made, we unlearn and learn anew what we thought we knew before."
Henry David Thoreau, "Winter"
"As long as we continue to mindlessly defer to institutions that have themselves begun to cynically drop any pretence of being moral, just, or respectable - why should the government listen? it's doing just fine."
Arundhati Roy
"The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crises, maintain their neutrality."
Dante Alighieri
" But don't worry, I am not the bread and the knife. / You are still the bread and the knife. / You will always be the bread and the knife, / not to mention the crystal goblet and--somehow-- the wine."
Billy Collins
"If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?"
Albert Einstein
"The broadest and most prevalent error requires the most disinterested virtue to sustain it. . . Those who, while they disapprove of the character and measure of a government, yield to it their allegiance and support are undoubtedly its most conscientious supporters, and so frequently the most serious obstacles to reform."
Henry David Thoreau, "Civil Disobedience"
"'Well, how can you talk without a brain?'
'I don't know, but some people without brains do an awful lot of talking, don't they?'"
Dorothy & Scarecrow,
The Wizard of Oz
"Poetry (and now my voice is rising) / is not all love, love, love, / and I'm sorry the dog died. / Poetry (here I hear myself the loudest) / is the human voice, / and are we not of interest to each other?"
Elizabeth Alexander
"But plans are one thing and fate another. When they coincide, success results. Yet success mustn't be considered the absolute. It is questionable, for that matter, whether success is an adequate response to life. Success can eliminate as many options as failure. "
Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues
"Seed hope. Flower peace."
Daniel Berrigan
provocation
stimuli
labels
- body politic (18)
- d-r-e-a-m-y (1)
- for art's sake (19)
- g.w. is a d.b. (4)
- grown-up books (8)
- methods resources (2)
- not teacher chic (1)
- poetry (25)
- ramblings of a first year teacher (47)
- recognition (4)
- science (1)
- teacher chic (12)
- travelogue (1)
- unapologetic consumerism (2)
- writing workshop talk (3)
- y.a. books (10)
7 comments:
They show an excellent critical eye for talent and dedication. Happy for your victories but not one bit surprised. These kids know they have it great, you can hear it. 14 days to go here !!!
Wow, that sums it up. It makes me want to go observe in your classroom! Great job on a successful 1st year!
Oh man...I really want to have my kids write some kind of reflection like that, but I'm way too afraid of what most of them will say. I don't know how many "I hate you"s I can handle in June.
Mine would say You should be a comedian or a cartoon drawer...Or something useful right ? I always add. Yeah, um. No not like that...But if I was I would never have met you I tell them !!!
disclaimer: there were plenty of letters to me that said stuff like "be stricter" or "we never finished that writing unit" or "don't read aloud so much--it's easier for me to read by myself."
that said, what's most important to me is that i made some sort of lasting impact on who they will become. even if it was the slightest sliver of an impact.
r/m-- and now i'm starting to question whether i need to be working someplace where the kids don't have plenty of positive role models at home. deep respect for what you do.
v-- plenty of things i've yet to learn, but i'm happy to have confirmation of at least hearing the messages i've tried to get across all year.
x-- dude they f'ing love you. you know it. you're the best thing that ever happened to those kids.
r/m-- i'll never forget, from the mouths of babes: "but don't people who graduate at the head of their class go on to be doctors and lawyers?"
They do have a point on the MD and JD angle Ms. K. If I could do math I would have loved to be an MD. If I had no soul I would have loved the JD. You know I love the lawyers, seriously.You had to go be Miss Smarty Pants and throw a wrench into everyone's nice, neat profiling job ... You know better than anyone after this year that affluent kids can use positive role models just as much as poor kids, they've still got to be kids and negotiate that path whether its in fubu or abercrombie !
That's so sweet! It must make it so worthwhile to know you have such a positive impact on students (even those with constructive criticism)!
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