The Class Farewell Card

In the picture, the students have made a large handmade farewell card, which is opened out on a classroom desk. It is covered in handwritten messages and small drawings from many different people, and coloured pens and erasers are scattered around it from the work. Two students are standing beside the desk, looking at what has been written. I think it is for a teacher who is leaving, because the writing on the board behind them appears to be a farewell message.

My form teacher in Primary 4 left at the end of the year because she was posted to another school. On the last day, our class gave her a card that we had signed secretly over two recesses, and she read it in front of us and had to stop halfway. I had written that she was the first teacher who made me feel that I was good at English. She wrote back to me on a small note before she left, and I still have it in my drawer.

I feel people give cards and gifts because it is difficult to say these things out loud. Writing lets us tell someone what they meant to us without having to face them while saying it, and it gives them something to keep once we are no longer around to say it again. It matters because people rarely know the effect they have had on others, and a teacher may have no idea that she changed how a student felt about a subject. That is why I believe telling someone before they leave is one of the kindest things we can do.