In honor of
Teacher Appreciation Week, I have been reflecting (teachers have to reflect ALL
THE TIME) on the wonderful gifts I’ve received over the past few years from
students. Now there were quite a few
options to choose from, but I managed to narrow it down to the top 5. Sadly, I couldn’t find pictures of some of
them, so you’ll just have to imagine.
I’ll do my best to describe them accurately without exaggeration.
5. Flowers
Last Valentine’s
Day was a pretty spectacular gift day.
Now, I’m not the biggest Valentine’s Day fan, but I tried to rally since
that kind of thing is really fun for 5 and 6 year olds. One of my students (and it was THAT student,
you know, the one that you learned their name first because you have to say it
SO much because they are such a hot mess) brought me flowers. It was the sweetest. I even teared up a little. I showered him with thanks, gave him a
hug. He did the shy shrug and half-smile
thing, almost making up for the hours of frustration he had caused me.
I lovingly placed the flowers in a vase and placed
them on my desk. A few hours later, his
mom comes in to help with (or be there for) the Valentine’s Party, which is my
least favorite school activity. She
comes up to me in a panic asking about the flowers. I showed her how I had proudly displayed
them.
And she says, “Oh, those aren’t for you. They are for a girl in the class he has a
crush on..”
So I had to take the flowers out of the vase and
give them to a 5 year old. That was a
personal low point in my life.
4. Grocery
Bag Full of Hot Cheetos*
This was not a bag of Hot Cheetos. Nor was it a grocery bag with a bag of Hot
Cheetos inside it. This was legitimately
a plastic grocery sack with loose Hot Cheetos inside of it. I wish I had taken a picture, just to prove
that I’m not exaggerating. But, sadly, I
did not. You’ll just have to take my
word for it.
*For the life of me, I do not understand what the
huge deal is with Hot Cheetos. They are
disgusting. But I can’t tell you how
many fights I’ve had to break up started by Hot Cheetos.
3. A Shofar
Yes, a shofar.
If you are not familiar with this, it is a musical instrument (usually
made from a ram’s horn) typically used in Jewish religious ceremonies. This would have been a much cooler gift if
either this student or I were Jewish, but we are not.
Also, this gift was not for any particular
reason. Just a random day, he walked
into the room and handed me a shofar. I
did take a picture of this to prove that it actually happened (see picture 3)
2. Put a
Bird on It!
In The Hood, you get lots of notes and pictures
from kiddos who are trying to suck up to you.
This particular picture has been my favorite so far—partly because of
the fact that it is of birds, partly because the birds are labeled, mostly
because of the craziness of the situation surrounding the picture.
I was going about my day, having a relatively calm
day (that should have been my first clue that things were about to
explode). I was doing small reading
groups, and heard some door slamming and yelling going on in the hallway right
outside my room. I happened to glance out
my door window to see my teammate being swung around the hallway by the lanyard
around her neck. She was desperately
trying to get the lanyard off, but the student on the other side of it was
having none of that.
In an effort to save her life, I ran to the
hallway and said “Hey student! Do you
like birds?” I have no clue why I said
birds. I don’t really like birds. Maybe I had subconsciously noticed him
reading a book about birds. But he
stopped dead in his tracks and turned his attention on me. I did a quick scan of my body, making sure I
had nothing he could strangle me with, but this huge smile spread across his
face. He let go of his teacher and ran
to get colored pencils and paper.
We teachers took a second to regroup in the hall
(and of course follow all administrative protocol). Twenty minutes later, student showed up at my
door with this picture (see picture 2).
From then on, every time he got angry at a
teacher, we’d just ask for a picture of a bird. He’d do all this research on the best birds
to draw pictures of, and do these fantastic representations. Teacher success!
1. Panda
Bear
I don’t really know why, but I think panda bears
are really cool. Not cool enough to
collect figurines or know random trivia facts about them. This is just a general interest that I
have. This note from a beloved student
used to have a panda bear button on it, which made it even more precious than
it was originally (see picture 1).
Also, the story behind this note makes it more
precious. I had a classful of
super-emotional girls. They could not go
a full day without crying. It would
usually start with one crying for some non-reason, then another would start
crying because the first one was crying.
Then another would cry because all her friends were crying and she
didn’t know how to make them feel better.
I know it sounds sweet, but really it’s just annoying.
We had just come in from recess, and of course all
the girls were crying. None of them
could explain to me who started it or why anyone was crying, so I pulled them
all out into the hallway for an intervention.
After what seemed like HOURS of snottiness and tears, it came out that
one was upset because she couldn’t decide which of her best friends she should
play with. The others were crying
because they could sympathize, they also couldn’t decide which best friend to
play with. So, naturally, I suggested
they all play in a group together.
Apparently, second graders need more intentional time together (2’s
company, 3’s a crowd). So we made a
schedule for the week of who should play with who each day at recess.
So this picture reminds me that I fix people’s
feelings when they are sad. Crushed it.
Jodie
What are the best gifts you’ve ever received from
students?
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