Each year for the past few years, I've offered to meet my seniors at a local Mongolian Barbecue restaurant as a kind of farewell dinner. The mnemonic for this year's dinner was "six six at six", for 6/6 at 6pm (hence the title of this post).
Last night my student teacher, her husband and baby girl, and maybe 2 dozen students showed up. We kind of overwhelmed the small restaurant, but everyone took it in stride. We weren't noisy or bossy or obnoxious, so I don't think they minded the business on a Wednesday night!
But what a treat it was! It's hard to be a teacher and not develop some affection for many of your students, so it's nice to be able to spend some time with them in a social environment. I made it around to all the tables to socialize for a bit--because, after all, that was the main idea--and we all had a great time.
One student brought me one of those notes we teachers live for. I considered scanning it and putting it on here to show you an example of one of the decent kids I get to teach, but instead I just put it in my rainy day folder--where I keep things to remind me of why I do this job, to be referenced when I'm ready to quit.
I'm off downtown in a few minutes for graduation, where I'll see many of them for the last time. It's a great time of year to be a teacher!
One of the coolest events I had during my second mis-guided college youth was after my first year calc class. Many of my friends and I were going to bar for some beer after the final and we decided to invite our professor to join us. After turning in my exam I asked him and he said "I might". To our pleasant surprise he did and he spent an hour with us laughing about the past semester. I know he needed a break too.
ReplyDeleteYou do get that Darren...none of my customers wanna have dinner with me!