The Same Teacher for First Six Grades

As a parent, I finally understand the sacrifices my parents made for me growing up. Providing food, shelter, and things to succeed in life, like education.

The first six years of my education were special for different reasons. One that stands out to me:

I had the same teacher for my first six grades.

I didn’t know how different this was at the time and looking back, I am glad to have the same teacher for my first six grades.

The reason the class had the same teacher for the first six grades is my parents joined with other parents to create the first Chinese-English bilingual program outside of a Chinese speaking country.

This was wild at the time - the class had half the material in English, and the other half of the material in Chinese.

The English speaking teachers would change from year to year, the Chinese speaking would stay the same.

Why would the Chinese teacher stay the same?

Because we were the pilot program, so they created materials as we went along.

Reflecting back now, having the same Chinese teacher through those six grades gave us a special bond. A deeper connection than a one year relationship.

The pinnacle example of how this bond worked out: for the class discussion on dreams in the sixth grade, our teacher asked us what our dreams were - which we shared.

THEN, we flipped the question back on them!

It was then we, the students, found out what our teacher’s dream was! The answer kicked off a whole other set of adventures.

I can’t imagine asking a teacher what their dream is at that age now, and if I did, I don’t believe a teacher would give an honest or heartfelt answer to their class - or at least one that would start a whole new set of adventures.