Tears, Jokes about Tears, and Jokes about Jokes about Tears

I'm actually not proud that I have had a few students cry through the years (invariably upon the return of a test).  However, it is also true that I joke about crying a lot in class.  It is a running gag in my classes that I am cold, heartless and was drawn to the profession by the opportunity to make kids cry.  I think most of the students know I am joking but you never know... teenagers do tend to personalize everything.  One student told me this year: "You know, you are used to making these kind of remarks before you were masking and people could see you smiling while you made them, but now that you mask - we just don't know..."

So I was quite jealous when my colleague showed me that in her end-of-the-year loot, she had a mug titled "for the tears of my students".  What about me?  Isn't this my joke?  Well, when I got home I unpacked a gift from AS and was quite vindicated to see this gem:

Quite the meta statement, is it not?  That twist of capturing them warm... well, now that's just delightfully perverse.

I am so looking forward to sipping from the mug on opening day in the fall while laying out the syllabus in honors physics...

Graduation

 Well, the day finally rolled around: Isabelle has graduated from high school.  That seemed really fast in the rearview mirror!

Every year, the graduating class asks some of their teachers to march and sit with them ("marshals").  I've been to my fair share, but this year was obviously a bit different.  It turns out there are a lot of teacher-kids in this particular graduating class.  Here is a collection of parent-marshals:

Several former students came back to snap a picture after the ceremony.  Here's one picture with a cohort from the astronomy class that was shared with me:

And there were even some former students from farther back in time who popped out of the audience afterwards too!  For example, The Hive showed up:

Turns out, this was the first graduation Seb has ever attended and the first since her own that Irene had attended.  As I told a student who didn't want to attend, a big reason for the ceremony is actually for your family rather than for you!  I guess that might be what some call wisdom (at least for me it represents a more enlightened attitude to rites-of-passage and ceremonies in general as compared to how I thought about them in my youth!)