After spending 98 days in a classroom of 5 and 6 years, it's so nice to break free for a day and be a real adult. Once a year I get to hang out at a really cool place (this year it was at the Casa del Sol-beach front, $600 a night, hotel) see old friends, made to feel really special for being a classroom teacher, and get served a 3 course meal (it was salad, an amazing white fish filet with sundried tomatoes over bright yellow rice, and for dessert, vanilla bean ice cream with some sort of "exploding" chocolate mini cake). The Milken Foundation really knows how to throw a banquet to honor teachers. This year I was on the selection committee for secondary school teachers. There were three winners from California this year, 2 science teachers and a math teacher. All three had either planned or had other careers in the sciences and ended up following their hearts and went into teaching. None of this years winners are pictured above (they were busy taking photos on the stage, oh the memories), so here is a picture of colleagues that were past winners. We shared what we were doing this year and Davide (he's the tall Italian), shared that a former ELL student from second grade came back to his class this year with his parents and a letter of acceptance to MIT in hand. He told Davide, "Remember you said I am going to find the cure to cancer? Well I am!" Davide has that letter framed and on display to remind him of why he does what he does. sniff, sniff... Tell me you don't have impact on the lives of children as a teacher...
1 comment:
Oh my goodness! Your story of Davide gave me chills. With my luck, a former student is going to come back and say, "Remember when I stole your camera. Well, now I'm going to prison because I stole 20 bajillion cameras."
This entry reminds me, I need to get on board the BP grant train.
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