I wonder if they think about me!

I just put together a collage of pictures from my summer travels thus far. I went to Walgreens and sat down for about 30minutes to place my favorite pictures onto one picture - a similar process people go through when they make their Christmas pictures nowadays. The next step will be to type up a summary of where the pictures were taken and what I experienced at each particular moment. And perhaps the most important, and time-consuming step, will be to place twenty-four of these pictures in individually addressed, stamped envelopes, to be sent to each of my homeroom students I just had in the 2010-2011 School Year.

This has become a tradition of mine that started about five years ago. All-in-all, it probably costs me about $25, and about 4-5 hours to complete the project. To me, it's a cheap investment to make in my students. Due to our increasing technology, very few people seem to be sending letters through the mail, and it's quickly becoming a lost art-form - almost like sitting at the table as a family to eat dinner.Therefore, I'd like to play my part in keeping it around. It definitely requires more time to do, and I feel the time I take is almost like a therapy as well as a bridge to the past.

The message I'm trying to convey is one that will hopefully show my students I think about them even when they are "technically" no longer my students. The summertime is a busy time, full of fun, travel, sleeping in, staying up late, etc, and I wonder if my students ever stop for a moment to think about what I'm doing. In their defense, I don't think I ever thought about my teachers when I was growing up! But then again, they never sent me anything in the mail about what they were doing over the summer!

Perhaps I will never know if they think about me - I'm sure they wouldn't admit it to their friends. It's probably about as cool as letting your parents pick out your first-day-of-school outfit for 7th grade! I suppose it doesn't really matter. Just as long as they realize that I think about them and I plan on being their teacher for life. And this simple collage of pictures and letter aim to be evidence of that.