On Facebook, telling teachers how much they meant

Sudahkah anda mengucapkan kepada ibubapa dan guru anda tentang betapa bermaknanya mereka kepada anda selama ini melalui Facebook atau cara-cara lain? Jika belum, mula-mulalah dari sekarang.

On Facebook, telling teachers how much they meant

2010/07/24

Darci Hemleb Thompson, 49, reconnected with Alice D’Addario, a former teacher from Long Island, through Facebook
DARCI Hemleb Thompson had been on the lookout for Alice D’Addario for many years.
From her home in Hampton, Virginia, Thompson, 49, who is married and has a 12-year-old daughter, was determined to find D’Addario on the Internet.

She tried every search engine and networking site she could find.


About 18 months ago she hit the jackpot.

“Nice to see one of the greatest teachers of all time on Facebook!” Thompson wrote on D’Addario’s wall.

D’Addario was Thompson’s Advanced Placement history teacher at Walt Whitman High School in Huntington Station, on Long Island, in 1977.


“She had such a huge impact on my life as a young adult,” Thompson said, describing her tumultuous teenage years living with two alcoholic parents and experiencing early symptoms of multiple sclerosis.

“I was depressed and so sad and isolated, and she reached out and saved me,” Thompson added.

“Facebook gave me the chance to tell her, ‘You’re the one who pulled me through’.” At a time when public school teachers are being blamed for everything from poor test scores to budget crises, Facebook is one place where they are receiving adulation, albeit delayed.


The site has drawn more attention as a platform for adolescent meanness and bullying, and as a vehicle for high school and college students to ruthlessly dissect their teachers.

But people who are 20, 30 or 40 years beyond graduation are using Facebook to re-establish relationships with teachers and express gratitude and overdue respect.

Over the years, teacher tributes have come in broad formats, in movies like To Sir, With Love and Stand and Deliver and in television series like Room 222.

Now, on Facebook, the praise is personalised, more widespread and democratic.

On Facebook walls and dedicated tribute pages, the writings betray emotions that students dared not display in their youth.

They include moving messages (“You inspired each of us to learn and go beyond what we thought we could achieve”), light-hearted claims on old debts (“You owe us a pool party — you promised us one if the Dow ever reached 3,000”) and recollections of specific events (“You got me out of detention one time”).

In the weeks before the death of Jerry Sheik — a retired band teacher from Intermediate School 70 in Chelsea — last month, his wife Judith Kalina said he was overwhelmed by the praise written on a Facebook page created in his honour, “Sheik’s Freaks Reunite: A Celebration for Jerry Sheik”.

The page has 135 members, mostly students from the 1970s who played in the stage band Sheik conducted.

They have posted old band photos and recalled their rendition of “Oye Como Va”.

A former student, Ned Otter, said, “Jerry was the first one to put a sax in my hand.” Otter went on to play saxophone professionally, touring with Dizzy Gillespie.

He is one of nine overseers of the Sheik’s Freaks page.

“He played a critical role in my life,” Otter added.

The tributes underscore what researchers have identified as a major force in adolescents’ lives, said Jacqueline Ancess, a researcher at Teachers College at Columbia University.

“The most powerful factor in transforming students is a relationship with a caring teacher whom a kid feels particularly connected to,” said Ancess, who added that many students had told her that if not for a particular teacher, they would not have graduated or would not have taken a certain direction.

Bill Chemerka, 64, who was a history teacher at Madison High School in New Jersey for 29 years, said he did not know what Facebook was until a student pointed him to the 455-member “Mr.

Chemerka Fan Club” page.

He found this message: “Your love of history and teaching oozed from your pores and allowed every student to absorb your knowledge and passion for life and history.” Sheldon Jacobowitz, 68, said he was delighted with his Facebook connection with roughly 200 former students from New Utrecht High School in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn — the school that inspired the 1970s television series “Welcome Back, Kotter” — where he taught Mathematics for 37 years.

“I think it’s amazing; it’s a great feeling,” Jacobowitz said.

“How they make you feel that you were so important in their lives — it makes everything worthwhile.” — NYT

sumber: http://www.nst.com.my/nst/articles/OnFacebook_tellingteachershowmuchtheymeant/Article/
tarikh capaian: 29 Julai 2010