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Staff Appreciation Day celebrations in Raffles Institution recently concluded. A central question had inevitably permeated its way, once again, into the student body’s consciousness: what do I get for my teachers? From personal experience, finding an effective way to express your gratitude to your teachers is, in actual fact, often a complicated process. This is one of the things this article precisely intends to address. With the gift of hindsight, here are 2 principles that will guide you through the process of finding thoughtful and meaningful ways to express your gratitude to your teachers. Hopefully they will not only be of assistance to you when Staff Appreciation Day comes around next year, but they will also help you in the present, as you go about trying to do something that appears a lot easier than it actually is — saying thank you to your teachers.
- Gifts that Come from the Heart, Not Our Pockets
There is a reason our teachers discourage us from spending money on expensive gifts, and instead prefer a simple handwritten card. Although gifts can certainly be thoughtful ways of expressing our gratitude, we need to recognise that words can also be equally, if not more, meaningful.
Ms Michelle Tan believes that it is incredibly “heartening and encouraging” when, through handwritten cards, she is able to “read about how she has been able to make a positive impact” on “a student’s life that hopefully lasts longer than that moment.”
Words are most touching when they come from the heart because they are an accurate reflection of what the writer truly believes in; and it is incredibly meaningful to teachers to hear that the effort that they have put into teaching us has had a lasting effect on the way in which we view the world around us. Perhaps this is an example of some of the unique specialties exclusive to writing cards that bought gifts cannot bring to the table.
- Empathise — put yourselves in their shoes
A lot of being able to express sincere gratitude to someone involves truly understanding why he or she is worthy of this gratitude. In the case of our teachers, we are only able to write them meaningful cards or meaningfully say ‘thank you’ to them on a daily basis if we recognise the extreme amounts of time and effort that they put into teaching us. This involves empathy.
There needs to be a fundamental shift in the ways in which we see our teachers. On the most basic level, the questions may arise: why does what they do require special thanking? As teachers, are they not meant to do such things in the first place – what is so remarkable?
The truth is, teaching as a job by nature is overwhelmingly demanding. If you take the amount of work that you have to juggle and triple it —you may not even be scratching the surface of the extreme commitment that teaching entails. Apart from conducting lessons, teachers have to complete a lot more behind the scenes—planning lessons, marking assignments, and—perhaps most mentally taxing—dealing with our little shenanigans.
Nonetheless, they push on because, in many cases, they believe that they are making a difference to students’ lives in the present and future. They keep going even when things get tough because the prospect of changing a young child for the better is much too enticing for them to sacrifice. It is, therefore, our duty to give back to them. To genuinely feel compelled to express our gratitude to our teachers, we need to take an interest in them. We need to understand the specific tangible struggles that they experience on a daily basis. Only then will we truly exercise empathy.
I hope that these examples have effectively supplemented your knowledge on how you can go about expressing your gratitude to your teachers. Reflecting further on what has been mentioned, however, I hope that you have managed to pick up a message of deeper significance: it is undeniable that all of our teachers, regardless of whether we prefer some over others, put immense amounts of effort and time into teaching us. Any amount of inundating fatigue or worry that we experience in our stressful student lives could easily be amplified exponentially in the lives of the teachers — they too, are humans. A lot of us recognise this, which throws a spanner in the works – if this is the case, why, then, is there a lack of a sincere gratitude-expressing culture in RI?
There could be many reasons for this. Though this is purely subjective, from what I have learnt, we may tend to shy away from doing so because sincerely expressing gratitude to our teachers may feel awkward and unusual. However, it shouldn’t have to feel this way at all.
Ultimately, the truth is, a simple, sincere ‘thank you’ could easily make a teacher’s day — these are the things that keep them going. Regardless of our reasons for not doing so in the first place, I believe that taking the step to express our heartfelt gratitude to our teachers is also the first step in improving the areas where our school culture may be lacking.
As such, I would like to encourage you to use the next Staff Appreciation Day celebrations as the impetus to break the barriers of social anxiety – or whatever they may be – and say thank you like you mean it, and do not, at any cost, abandon this habit in the future. Do it consistently. A heartfelt thank you at the end of an exhausting day could give a teacher the gift of purpose.
