Alliance for Catholic Education
Benjamin Franklin once said, “Wise men don’t need advice. Fools won’t take it.” Because I am surely not wise enough to avoid advice and not foolish enough to ignore a constructive comment, I asked my students to give me a piece of advice before their end-of-semester exams. I hid this request in the body of a long email about the contents of their exam and promised them a bonus point if they could provide me with some advice for the future. Here are some of those responses...
I received my fair share of things to stop doing. A girl in my homeroom asked me to stop playing Gayla Peevey’s 1953 classic “I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas” in the mornings, a request that I forcefully denied. A few asked for a final exam that was less than 100 questions (their semester exam was a measly 98 questions). Yet another requested that I not show up to her place of work again after my housemates and I spent an evening at the restaurant where she was a hostess. Though I could not promise to avoid her restaurant, I did promise to share my wonderful experience with the rest of our faculty and staff.
Then, of course, were the do’s. One sweet student asked that the lights be dimmer in my classroom—I have a habit of turning the lights up close to full brightness in the morning to wake myself up in the hour before students walk in the door, but I often forget to turn them down. I promised to try to do better. Another requested that I mix in a yellow or pink (“actually pink, not purple and pink”) dress shirt because “the blue kinda getting worn out ngl (not going to lie)." I did not think it was a crime to have a personal style, but I was sure to edit my Christmas list after hearing that. Finally, one student said that I should grow a beard, a request that I will have to consider one day for as often as I hear it.
Some of them even gave me some sayings to hold onto. One said, “Never give up.” Another remarked that “time fixes everything,” although, like a good English student who understands the danger of absolutes, he appended the comment with “most things, not everything.” One reminded me of an ancient saying: “Energy drinks are bad.” And another reminded me of some teaching advice: “If you teach a man to fish, you feed him for one day. If you feed him to the fishes, then he’ll never be hungry again.”
But the last advice of all was just a simple note. Without any greeting or closing, the email response said just this: “Keep doing this, Mr. Bonds.” Although this student was probably talking about the exam review email or the bonus points, like any good piece of advice, his comment applied to many situations and nestled its way into its own little space in my heart. Sometimes, I don’t know what “this” is or what “this” should look like or whether my doing “this” is really helping both my students and I reach our ultimate goals. But I guess the only way to find out those questions is to keep doing “this” until I’m sure of the answer.
And so, while I will not be growing a beard anytime soon, and, despite my best efforts, there will be days that the lights in my room blind my dear students, I will, at the very least, keep doing this. I can’t wait to see where it leads me next.