Teacher Thinks He Did Something Wrong, Cries When He Sees What Students Had Planned All Along
Students will find a way to salute a great teacher, even when a pandemic gets in the way.
Lauren Herrle, a student at Chapman University in Orange, California, recently shared a TikTok video of the way her class marked the last session with professor James Brown, the Independent reported.
The video shows a screen of students present, but with their webcams turned off.
“Is it the new cool thing to do, not turn your camera on?” Brown said. “I’ve heard that. I’ve heard that in some classes nobody turns their camera on, including the instructor.”
No response.
Brown decided to start class.
“Here we go,” he said before stopping.
Then he spoke with concern in his voice.
“Seriously, is it my fault that you have your cameras off?” he said.
Herrle then took over.
“So, Dr. Brown, we actually kind of wanted to do something,” she said. “Everybody, do you want to go ahead?”
One by one, the cameras came on, each with a sign thanking the professor for his work over the semester.
“We appreciate you, Dr. Brown,” one sign read.
“Thank you for making a difference every day,” read another.
“Oh, you guys. Oh, you’re going to make me cry,” Brown said, before doing just that.
The California students were not alone in finding a way to acknowledge a great teacher.
Adam Shrager, a high school teacher who teaches statistics at the College of New Jersey, had a similar experience, according to Today.
“Usually, in this class, solidly 90 percent of the students keep their cameras on the entire class. Sometimes they even send me a note apologizing that they will keep their camera off during a particular class for one reason or another,” he said. “Logging in and seeing no faces at all was very strange. All I could think was that my internet was slow or something.”
This was the last class before the final exam and Shrager, who works as a high school teacher by day, was concerned that he and his students would end the semester on the wrong note.
Then the students turned on their cameras, and Shrager saw a wall of thank-yous.
“The fact that they did this for me is something I will never forget,” he said.
“It’s been the roughest semester of my teaching career, but somehow we got through it. For it to end like this is genuinely beautiful and pretty crazy.”
Student Katherine De Oliveira, who organized Shrager’s thank-you event, said the professor went above and beyond.
“He consistently asked us about our mental health, our family members and our furry friends while introducing his own pets to us,” she said. “As a student, I could never tell when he had a particularly difficult or great day prior to class because he always welcomed us kindly and was excited to talk to us and teach statistics.”
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