An Open Letter To My Students...

This is what I read to my students tonight as we dined on pizza (see, who said I am not a nice teacher?), discussed grades on the final exams and passed back their last essays of the semester.

Dear Class-

As some of you already know from our preclass or after class discussions, I was asked/begged to teach this class four days prior to the start of the fall semester. At the time that I received the phone call from Tri-C, I was in the process of moving and getting trained for new duties at work. Needless to say, this was a very stressful time in my life and chaining myself to my laptop for an entire weekend in order to structure some type of workable syllabus and lesson plans for at least the first few classes did not seem like such an appealing choice. However, I knew that I wanted to teach and if this was to be my chance I was going to take this as a sign ( I was still not sure if it was a good sign, though) and I agreed to take on this teaching assignment. After I hung up the phone I darting to my manager's desk to make sure I could cut out for a few hours the next day in order to have the quickest cram session imaginable with the English Department Head, collect the texts for the class and try to keep as calm as possible despite the rapidness of all the events around me. Oh, and did I mention that I was also slowly wrapping my mind around the reality that this was an 8:00-10:40pm class M&W meaning that my social life as well as my sleep requirements would have to take a heavy hit.

Looking out across this room tonight at all of you, I am so glad that I chose to accept the challenge of teaching this class. Over the semester I have had the wonderful opportunity to see so many of you grow as writers and critical thinkers. I realize that this is not the easiest class to attend due to the graveyard shift time slot but all of you, well, most of you, have made the commitment and thrived in this class. I applaud those of you that are juggling family obligations and full-time jobs.

My hope was not that you come away loving English Composition. If you have, that is great but I also know that you are probably lying through your teeth. My hope is that you come away as being a better writer, reader and more most importantly, a better overall student. I know that I have become a better teacher because of all of you. If you ever need anything you have my email and phone number. Hopefully, we can catch up again in another class at Tri-C (I am keeping my fingers crossed because I am pretty low on the seniority list currently as "adjunct faculty") but if we never meet again, thank you for being such quality students. I wish you the best of luck in all of your endeavors.