End of Summer

The end of summer is always bittersweet. No more 8 hour teaching days (hooray!) but no more Saturdays off (boooo!). But we survived summer without any major problems. The students on the last day do Teacher evaluations which are always interesting and terrifying. I always warn them that I will recognize their handwriting so they had better write nice things. I always refer to these as the reviews because most of our business is word of mouth and if we mess up with a class it does make a difference. Overall the students were not impressed by the math teacher who they thought was a little too laid back. The Reading teacher got positive feedback but the materials were a problem because the students could not see the value in many of the exercises we made them do. The most prevalent comment was that I knew my stuff...and the Reading teacher's stuff and the vocabulary teacher's stuff and even some of the math teacher's stuff in addition to being able to demystify the clause, true conjunctions and how to use a semi-colon. Basically over 7 years of teaching the SAT, I can answer almost any question the kids come up with and more importantly explain why the answer is correct. I had one student comment that I was "not the friendliest teacher" but the same student said that the math teacher brought "too much of his personal life to class" so basically this kid is never happy.
I had one student write me a letter while he was supposed to be writing his final essay for the final practice test. This kid was really interesting because he grew up and still lives in a small town in Washington State and lives what I would consider a typical American teens life. He goes to school has a an afterschool job, drives a car, hangs out with his friends on weekends...the kind of teen years I think I experienced. Then his parents send him fro the summer to this city that's hot and dirty and make him spend summer in classes learning 2000 vocabulary words and reading hundreds of pages of articles and he is surrounded by kids who look like him but whose lives are polar opposite. My typical student attends a private high school, comes to private classes 3-4 days a week after school and on Saturdays. Will not get a driver's licence until they are in their 20's and communicates with friends through cell phones and instant messengers. He was like a kindred spirit in class who understood when I said "money is not everything" or "get a job and learn what you like to do" or "read a book about a subject that interests you...even if is has nothing to do with school". He spent the second half of the summer with a count down until he could go back to his real life. This is the letter he wrote to me.

Well this is the last essay and I decided instead of writing a crappy essay full of BS, to write you a letter. I'm not sure about what but I guess it'll just flow out of my pencil. I'll start by saying thank you. I appreciate your hard work and I'm sure everyone else does too. You just can't see it clearly. I'm surprised you haven't shopped someones head off yet. The patience you have is probably matches the patience of a thousand individuals. Oh, how can you deal with Andrew (a student...not my husband) ? I have had numerous occasions when I wanted to break his face in. I can see the bomb start to tick in you when the two of you start to argue. Whichever method you use to relieve stress is a keeper. I hope you enjoy reading this more than a regular essay.

The Andrew, referenced above, is a student who has never been told that he is wrong because he insists that he is right at all times , but he can't form a logical argument to explain why he is right, he just is. Apparently his Mom has always told him that he is the smartest individual in any room. This would not be so bad if the kid actually read about or thought about anything besides computer games. But he doesn't so when I say that Batman is an anti-hero, I'm just wrong because obviously Batman is a hero. Does Andrew know what Anti-hero is? Nope but whatever just came out of my mouth was wrong anyway. So you see the students come in a delightful array of personalities.