The Kids Are OK

In many jobs, people work with the same individuals year after year. In teaching, the majority of those you work with - your students - move on after five or ten months, making way for a new wave of faces and personalities. (And the combination of those twenty-five or thirty personalities in one room day after day creates an interesting classroom "stew"!)

So it isn't surprising that, after many years of teaching, I sometimes look back and wonder how the hundreds - if not thousands - of students that I taught are doing, especially the younger ones I taught in my early years, who may have suffered from my lack of experience. (Or perhaps gained from my youthful energy!) What did I really teach them? - those energetic adolescents? Hopefully to get along with others and to believe in themselves.














So it has been gratifying to discover, recently, that THOSE KIDS ARE OK!

Although they now live in different parts of the globe, the Internet - especially Facebook - has allowed a large group of my early students to reconnect. This past summer, a mutual friend informed me that one young man I taught 40 years ago in a school over 5500 miles (or almost 9000 kilometers) away lives in the same city as I do!

This young man is active in this online "reunion" of former classmates and colleagues sharing pictures and memories. As a result, I am now - amazingly - in touch with some of students I taught in my early teaching years!

It's hard to believe! And exciting!... But most gratifying of all is to see that - all these years later - THE KIDS ARE OK!

Because inside the teacher, there is a surrogate parent who wants them to succeed and be happy!