I can still remember the first year I taught in Lebanon; I can especially remember my first Teacher’s Day. I suppose it was more memorable than others due to the fact that it came as such a surprise. After all, I’d been working hard at all kinds of things up until then and never had a whole day totally dedicated to my labours! Now, here I was with not only a day off from school, but a bag of loot to take home!
Before you get too excited, let me explain what I mean by a bag of loot. Back then, most of the presents I received, and I got quite a few that year as I taught English to 63 students, were from the local $1 shop. They were an eclectic variety of badly cast cherubs with lopsided smiles, mugs with various messages (all of which were very polite), and other such china gems. They served as faithful dust collectors in nooks and crannies around the house bringing back happy memories of smiling faces.
Robert, Sarin, and I
at the Teacher’s Day
party in Le Grey
(Left is me - right is Sarin. I'll leave you to guess where Robert is...)
Where I’m working at the moment they have decided that Teacher’s Day should not be celebrated with gifts to teachers. Boo hah I hear you cry! Well, that’s just what the majority of teachers cried, too! This year’s “celebrations” were rather muted to say the least. With no gifting frenzy featuring children struggling up to the 4th floor carrying overflowing bags, the whole day was quite an anti-climax. It appears that Teacher’s Day with no presents doesn’t only mean a lot less to the teachers, the children seem to have totally forgotten about it. Maybe the parent-bought presents were the only tangible reminder of the existence of this special day to honour their hard-working mentors.
It might be more ethical to have no Teacher’s Day gifts, but it sure has gone a long way to killing the day! Thank goodness for the party… Well, we had one this year, who knows about next!?
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