This year our seniors wrote thank you cards to various teachers. I got several of them, but the following, printed here in its entirety (minus identifying names) was from a student who has a lot of potential, but really spread himself thin this year. His mom came up to me several times in the last month to apologize for his apparent lack of effort. Well, read on and see:
“Dear Mr. _________,
I just wanted to let you know how much I appreciated this year as your math student. I can think of no other <school name> class that challenged me the same way that Calculus BC has, and I learned more about problem solving and creative thinking than I ever have before. I know that our class wasn’t always the most diligent or focused, but I hope that you know that it was far more a result of our being seniors than anything in the way the course was taught. You know from my journals that I would have tweaked (and, in fact, you did tweak) some aspects of the course, but overall I want to thank you for forcing me to step outside of my comfort zone and really struggle. You’ve certainly helped me to start to develop valuable skills for college and beyond.
Thanks,”
What made this nice to hear is that I had already received all the cards I thought I would get, the grades were turned in, and the seniors had graduated, but this turned up in my box today. If one of my goals was to change my students attitudes about math and how they approach it, then I think this is some evidence that I made progress toward that goal. As for did they learn the material? I will wait with baited breath until the results of the AP exams show up.
As I share other pieces of my editing process this summer I will also put out specific pieces of advice I asked this years class to write for next years.
