'Valentines' From Students: Good Teachers May Not Be Great Human Beings

(Jerry Heverly is an English teacher at San Leandro High School.)

Since yesterday was Valentine’s Day I thought it would be appropriate for me to talk about the cards and notes I’ve gotten from students (and, occasionally, parents) over the years.

I don’t get many such cards, perhaps two to three per year. I get a handful of Christmas cards and perhaps one Valentine. The majority are handed to me on the last day of school.

I get two types of correspondence, apologies and thank you’s. Dissatisfied customers keep silent. Since I do the grades on the last days of school it wouldn’t be prudent to bare your complaints then.

My favorite note came from a typing student a few years ago. In those days I split my day between English and “keyboarding”, a combination of typing and basic computer skills.

My overriding goal in keyboarding was no different than that of my typing teacher in 1963—to give everyone the ability to type without looking at the keyboard.

There were always a handful of kids who refused to stop looking down as they typed. I warned them that they’d not pass the course unless they gave up that forbidden habit. This was probably the most singular time in my career when I embraced the concept of tough love.

At the end of one term I got a note from a female student:

“In the beginning of this class,” she wrote,  “I was ready to quit because you were so strict on me. Its (sic) funny how things work. Me and you became the best of friends in the weirdest way.

“I remember I would go home every other day and tell my mom how unfair you were…. I always thought one day she would take my side and take me out of this class, but nope she sent me straight to our computer and told me to practice your home keys …. {This class has} made me blossom into the most technical person that I am today.”

Summer school was probably my toughest challenge. The heat and the assemblage of recalcitrant teens made for daunting disciplinary problems. Almost every August I’d get a note like the one I got in 2003:

            “It seems that summer school this year, and my class in particular, was extremely hellish. On my behalf I would like to apologize for the many times I wasn’t a help, or the times I chose to disobey you. I couldn’t imagine myself in your shoes. P.S. Sorry for using ‘hellish’.”

Some years I write letters to my students apologizing for mistakes I’d made over the preceding months or trying to show them the reasoning that went into decisions I’d made that they often couldn’t fathom.

The first class I ever taught, filling in for a pregnant geometry teacher, inspired me to tell them about a test that hadn’t gone well:

            “I was so conceited,” I wrote at the end of my assignment, “that I thought virtually all of you would improve during my time with you. When that didn’t happen I felt betrayed by you. When you did badly on the first tests I was angry with you. How dare you fail!”

I’m sure they thought I was nuts.

But the most remarkable note of my career didn’t go to me. On the last day of school I sat with a retiring English teacher, Ms. K.

I think it would be fair to say that everyone thought of Ms. K. as one of the true stars of the English department, the epitome of a good teacher. She showed me a note she’d just received from a student:

“Ms. K. ,” it said, “you’re a good teacher—but you’re not a great human being.”

I’d settle for that on my headstone.

(You can read more essays like this in the archives of Entirely Secondary.)