Happy Teachers' Day

It's Teachers' Day here. Teachers' Day is a big deal in Turkey, especially in primary and secondary school. A couple of days ago, all the supermarkets and greengrocers started putting pots of flowers and boxes of chocolates on display near the check-out counters. Single carnations wrapped in cellophane have appeared in shop windows.

My husband teaches younger kids than I do and the kids (and more importantly, their parents) go all out, lavishing their teachers with gifts. My husband made out like a bandit last year; my daughters and I had to make several trips from his classroom to the car, all of us lugging carrier bags filled with his loot. Among the Teachers' Day presents he received were three bunches of flowers, two pen sets, a potted plant, a clock, a photograph album, two diaries, four boxes of candy, three batches of cookies, a loaf of banana bread, a foil package of freshly-baked brownies, a mug with his name on it, a fancy nazar boncuk amulet to ward off the evil eye, and a bottle of whiskey. Best of all were the hand-made cards depicting a middle-aged man teaching rows of laughing, smiling children. And the messages crayoned and penciled inside: YOU are the Bestest teacher ever! thaNK YOU THANK YOU! and Welove math now becuase ov you!

"What did you get?" my daughters asked me. All I could do was sigh: for Turkish university students, Teachers' Day isn't a big deal at all: none of my students gave me anything but grief.

In fact, I barely even noticed it was Teachers' Day last year. After an afternoon of teaching that was more hellish than usual, I was putting away my books when one of the girls in the front row creased her pretty forehead and muttered something in Turkish to the boy next to her. He frowned and flipped through the pages of his dictionary. The girl craned her neck to see. "Teechateechazday," the boy muttered as I bent to unplug my CD player. "Teechazday," the girl piped up after him. It took me two minutes to understand what they were trying to say. I felt awfully silly drilling the class stragglers on Happy Teachers Day, Teacher.

Last year, a half-hearted Teechateechazday was all I took home with me besides a headache.

This year, the Turkish Ministry of Education and Board of Health went and closed down every primary and secondary school in our area barely a week before Teachers' Day due to the swine flu epidemic. Swine flu has spread through Turkey like fire through dry tumbleweed, and even though our local schools have had only a few cases, every school had to lock its doors.

We've had cases of swine flu at the university too and hopes have been high; fervent prayers have been wafted up to the heavens and a petition has even been circulated -- all to no avail: no edict has been issued to close us down.

My husband and his colleagues will no doubt still be deluged with Teachers' Day gifts this year, but they will have to wait until school begins again to receive them.

I told myself that this year I knew what to expect, and I would not be disappointed. I knew that nobody would be bringing me candy, flowers, or ceramic mugs.

But as it turned out, I did get a gift. Something even better than flowers or candy or ceramic mugs.

Today I was sitting in the teachers' room when three students from last term came in, graduates of our preparation English program. They had come to talk to me, they said. They wanted me to know that their classmates were complaining about how hard it was to understand their English-speaking professors in the faculty. "But we understand everything they say," one of the boys told me, "because you talked so much to us all the time. Thank you, teacher."

Because I talked so much. Bless them, in all my life no one has ever thanked me for that before!

This evening I will be walking down to the main road to catch the dolmuş home with a spring in my step and a light in my eye. Mugs and flowers are great, but it turns out that heartfelt thank-yous are even better. And a whole lot lighter.