It’s back to school season and, as a teacher, sometimes that means a new class.
At least for me, a new school year almost always means I will loose some, if not all of my students and get new ones. Well, I get extremely attached to my students and I have anxiety just thinking about leaving them or them leaving me, so I decided to write about this topic and how I cope with it.
When it’s their last day I try to make it special. I buy them chocolate, I give them an extra hug, take a selfie with them. Sometimes they surprise me too 🙂 Last June, for example I got a card from every single student saying they were going to miss me, saying they liked my classes, and things like that. To be completely honest I was not expecting that at all!
When I left my previous school there were a lot of tears and hugs. I exchanged Wechats (Chinese social media app I like to describe as Whatsapp and Facebook had a baby and that’s Wechat!) with some of the parents and I try to keep in touch as much as I can. It’s not too rare to go for lunch / dinner / coffee with my old students and/ or parents, especially the ones that speak English. That helps a little with the anxiety I feel with leaving my “babies” as I call them. I know they are not really my babies but I love them all so much that I can’t just call them students. They are so much more than that to me. As I am writing this I recall a conversation I had with my mom yesterday. I told her the highlight of my day was when one of my babies told me he wished my classes were longer because he enjoyed them so much. There is no salary that pays these words. This is why it is so rewarding to be a teacher, and I don’t mean financially… because financially we all know that teachers are not payed enough! That’s a rant for another day.
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