Students

Iain, eating a delicious chocolate cookie baked by a student. He liked it.

I like history. But teaching is all about students. Today, a student left me a very special gift.

On my conference table there's a wide range of graffiti. Most is pretty tame: "X is hot!" and "I hate Y." But at one end of the table someone carved a nice anatomical term. It pops right off the table. You can't look away. Think "____ Monologues."

When the table lived upstairs, that particular word sat on the far end - away from the teacher. But when we moved the table downstairs, into my classroom, somehow it flipped. I spent the last 2 years looking down at it.

Today I came back to the room (between meetings) to find that a delightful young person wrote me a good-bye note, placed it over the offending word, and taped it down. Problem solved. Table restored to gentility.

Elegance, gratitude, and creativity, all in a single act.