Graduation

This is Terri's and my class graduating today. It was sad to say goodbye. I been teaching some of them for nearly five years. I have seen them (and have pictorial proof) grow from tots to kids. Most of them are only 10 years old. I have watched them learn English and seen them improve as English speakers under the caring tutorage of Terri. I can only take a very small amount of credit. I only taught them 25 percent of the time and she did all the hard work. Some students joined our class from other teacher's classes and I have watched their English come along in leaps and bounds. They are all pretty good kids although some of them are a little bit bland preferring to keep their noses in the books rather than have too much fun at school. Some of them are pushed pretty hard by their parents but they still enjoy coming to school and learning off Terri because she is such a good teacher.

I had to give a speech and as soon as I stood up, our students called for me to give the entire speech in Chinese.. Luckily, I had already prepared and spent endless hours practicing so it went off alright.

One of the students made a speech at the end. It was a little sad to hear a 10 year old say that she was sad to be leaving and thinking about it wanted to make her cry but she couldn't because she was no longer a kid. I am still a kid and I am 51.

The students are (starting with Terri top left and going clockwise).

Lucas, Lucy, Cici, Amanda, Kelly, Daniel, Cindy, Amy, Nancy, Angel, Jessica, Nina, Eric, Becky, Fiona, Yolanda and Yolanda Zhang.