Anonymity

What a crazy week.  Only one more week full of tennis matches before district tournament. It's a big one; we have three district matches this week and need to finish strong!

My juniors took the ACT during school on Wednesday.  Bless their hearts, they were pretty anxious about the test.  Tuesday night when I got home from my match, Andrew was in class (only two weeks left in the semester!), and I was totally bored.  So what's a girl to do when she's at home alone with a bag of chocolate chips sitting in the pantry?  Bake homemade chocolate chip cookies of course!  I bagged them up and attached a good luck note to each individual student.  I loved the look on their faces when they saw the cookies.  Surprisingly, I think they were more impressed with the personalized notes than the cookies themselves.  They kept saying, "It even has my name on it!"  

One of my goals with every class I teach is for each student to feel known.  Understood.  Cared for.  One of the talks I remember the most from Catalyst 2007 was Patrick Lencioni's discussion about anonymity and our fundamental need to feel known.  I stand at my door to greet them every day, calling them by name and either hassling them about class assignments or asking about other areas of their life - work, sports, family - it doesn't matter.  It just matters that I invest in them.  In return, they invest in my class.

Because they needed a little laugh to break the tension, I told them the cookies were from the Cookie Fairy - who else brings chocolate chip cookies on test day?  The cookie fairy added her magic dust to the recipe.  This magic ingredient contained correct answers and relaxation, and the effect lasted precisely two hours.  The two cookies were just enough to get them through their four hours of testing.  That is, if they made it out of my room uneaten.  Many just couldn't wait!

Good Luck Marissa! - from the Cookie Fairy

Side note: I wouldn't dare eat anything that touched one of these desks.  Ugh.

I just completed the design for my business cards.  What do you think?

I made the brackets a little thinner so they weren't too distracting.

Here's the back of the card.  I went with a dark gray font.  And um, no suggestions please.  The order has been submitted!