I owe a lot to my high school teachers. Those brave souls who decide to teach high schoolers deal with some of the worst parts of the teenage years. Here are my top three things I should have thanked my high school teachers for:
1. Thank you for preparing me well
Seriously, thank you. Before my freshman year, everyone told me that there is no way to be prepared for college. I heard horror stories of good, hard-working students struggling to pass their classes. And in some ways, you can't really be prepared. You can’t be prepared to live away from your family and friends, and you can’t really be prepared for the overwhelming (but also extremely exciting) amount of independence you have in college. But you can be prepared for college coursework. And I was. So, to all my high school teachers, thank you for challenging me to think deeply and critically about material, and questioning my intuition. Thank you for constantly creating new lesson plans, activities and assignments even when they were met with disgruntled teenage eyerolls.
https://giphy.com/gifs/kim-kardashian-eyeroll-MRW5...
2. Thank you for filling out countless evaluation, scholarship and recommendation forms
Between evaluation forms required by coaches for sports and extracurriculars and scholarship applications and college recommendations, you guys invested a lot of time in us. I know it isn’t really part of your job description and, although we tend to forget that, yes, you have lives outside of the classroom, we thank you for spending time filling out these forms and writing these letters. To those of you we asked to fill out these forms, it is because we respect and admire you.
3. And (perhaps most importantly) to those who I had the pleasure of taking classes from senior year...Thank you for understanding senioritis
Ah yes, senior year. A year when students are stressed, anxious and high-strung for first semester, then virtually disappear second semester. To those of you whose classes I took that year: thank you, and I’m sorry. Thank you for understanding how stressful, overwhelming, time-consuming and confidence-shaking the college application process is. Thank you for moving back deadlines for assignments when we begged and pleaded. But for also holding us accountable, because you knew in the "real world" the world doesn't revolve around us. Thank you for asking us how we were doing when we looked tired and stressed. And, most excitingly, thank you for genuinely being happy for us when we committed to schools.
And second semester… thank you for teaching to half-empty classes. Thank you for dealing with groans and sighs every time you assigned us a project no matter how small. Thank you for accepting blank stares when you asked a question because we had mentally checked out. Thank you for generally being understanding when we left class to wander the halls. Thank you for accepting assignments way past their deadlines (senioritis is a really crippling disease!). And lastly, to those of you who came to graduation, thank you for coming and watching us cross that stage. I think I can speak for my peers when I say that it means a lot to us to have you there, because our accomplishments are, in part, because of you.
So here’s to you, high school teachers. You guys rock.
