Regardless...
I happened to end up playing some euchre (sp?) with a few of Val's friends, which was actually pretty awesome. I am all for hanging out more with people who play cards. It's a great ice breaker.
The kid that I was sitting next to ended up being one of my previous students... From 8th grade! My student teaching experience was almost a decade ago. Now, there's no way I would remember any of my students from that long ago unless they did something absolutely wild. I remember one student who did really well on a quiz and then got expelled that evening for bringing a knife to a football game. He never got the quiz back and that made me sad. Even if I did remember them, I doubt I would recognize them. I don't even remember all of the teachers I had, let alone the students. A student will have at most 10 teachers per year... A teacher will easily have more than 100. As our class sizes increase next year, I expect to have close to 140. Do you seriously expect me to remember you 10 years down the line, when you look nothing like you did then? Hmm... Not really. He didn't expect me to, either. He did indicate that if I saw the yearbook I would be able to pick him out. I'd like to think so, but not so likely.
I don't mean to take away from the connection that takes place between a teacher and their students. By the end of the year, I spent a lot of time with those kids. From time to time, as it is appropriate, we discuss that stronger bonds will naturally form with some people and not with others. Some people click, and some people don't. If I was a better teacher, I could fake it. Maybe I should just try harder.
I do always try my best to give honest, frank yet careful and considerate feedback. I think this is what students remember most about me. I try to be different, but not just for the sake of it. I am scared of being one of those teachers who teaches math class like it's a history lesson. I think kids like this, but it's difficult to do.
So, yeah...
I don't remember you. But it's not like I don't care. It's not like I didn't want you to learn. It's not like I didn't do the best I could. I would like to be perfect, but as I would often say in class, "If you expect me to be perfect, you're going to get let down."
Now, for some funny internet pics!
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WHY SHOULD YOU REMEMBER THEM? Because you are their teacher! It's your duty - it's in the secret, sacred teachers-for-life handbook!
ReplyDeleteI haven't taught as long as you, and while I don't usually remember names; I remember faces and with them their personalities and/or, as you mentioned, their actions. I first taught at Glades Central and since we're close by I occasionally run into previous students (11th graders when I last saw them) around town. Like Deonte, he called out "Mrs. Martin! Mrs. Martin!" in Wal-Mart. I turned around and was bear-hugged by a very large, tattooed young man. My mind spun for a moment as I tried to place him (or maybe it was lack of oxygen) and then I remembered him: a hard-working, soft-spoken football player who one day gave me a forged pass. I wrote him up and they benched him from the Homecoming game. He's a corrections officer now in Belle Glade. I ran into another student at our game against the Raiders. I was standing there, ringing my cow bell, hawking face painting and sporting CHS war paint when a big smile in an UF sweatshirt points at me and yells, "You are my teacher!" Another bear-hug. (My GCHS kids were big on hugs - especially after a long break.) He has the same smile, still earning As in class, but he's about a foot taller! Playing Bball for UF, majoring in Education and planning to continue until he gets his PhD. :-) He said he learned a lot from me. I cried.
I believe that students learn best when they know (and they can always tell) that you care - not in a BFF way (a mistake that some teachers and parents make) but in a I-want-your-best-and-won't-settle-for-less parental way. Some don't have too many people in their lives that do care and it's awkward for them, some enjoy it and some 'bad' boys/girls will resist it - they have a rep to protect.
But whether they like it or not, they can't change it - they 'know' that you do care about what happens to them and a little bit of them softens up and lets the learning in.
When they see you again years later, they remember - not what you taught them or how much they think they learned or how much you pushed - they remember the essence of it: that you cared. Who knows if even just once, that knowledge, consciously or sub-consciously, lifted their spirits?
You cannot disappoint them after so many years. You are their teacher. And,that, my dear friend, is why you SHOULD remember them.
As always, enjoyed your blog. ***S
My favorite teacher remembered me after I reminded him of my last name. He knew my first name, and he knew where I sat! I don't expect any of them to personally recall details about me. I can't name the 60+ educators who I spent 13 years with, so it's ridiculous to think they'd remember 10,000 of us. I remembered why he was awesome, how he changed my education and my life just by caring, and that's enough.
ReplyDeleteEveryone has a lot of people in their lives who enable them to fail. I'm happy that a few of those teachers enabled me to succeed. It doesn't matter if they remember my name at a bar 7 years later. It matters that when they were in my life, they helped it. It's a little selfish, and frankly asinine, to think that a person has a responsibility to chronicle each and every student so that, in a chance encounter a decade later, they'll remember personal details of a former student who has undergone almost complete physical transformation, is not in a classroom context, and is talking to you in a bar or grocery store ten years after the fact.
That, my dear friend, is why you are correct. It's not your job to remember them. You have them nine months out of a lifetime. It's not about being fake or trying harder. It's numbers, and we all know you are a master of those.