Long Beach City College students from the Future Teachers Club (FTC) celebrated teacher appreciation day with a thank you card campaign with fellow students for their LBCC professors.
The club advisor, Megan Kaplinsky, explained how the club wants to give credit to whom credit is due.
“I believe that teachers can be underappreciated because there is so much work that the teachers do behind the scenes that no one sees. They grade beyond their office hours and their time with the college. They dedicate a lot of time to things like outreach, events, clubs and student life. This is a great opportunity to appreciate our teachers,” Kaplinsky said.
Some students who attended the event shared similar viewpoints with the club advisor.
LBCC student Priscilla Aletory emphasized how professors aren’t just people who teach a book to students, but they also give life lessons.
“All of our professors teach us more than just the material they are supposed to teach in class. They leave little gifts or fragments of themselves in each student. The students can take or leave whatever they learned from them,” Aletory said.
“But in the end, teachers have gone through many experiences in their life and in each of those they learned a lesson that we have not yet. Perhaps, they want to share that with you and that is priceless.”
Student Brandon Ordornia explained how he recognizes the struggles that some professors may go through and how sometimes they can be underappreciated.
“I feel like the work and effort that they are putting in working with other students, the expectation of them having a good life is there. They work very well with students and I do not see why not appreciate them. Their lives are given to this and maybe they struggle beyond the classroom, we just do not see it,” Ordornia said.
The students also gave shout outs to professors who had a great influence on their educational journey.
“I want to say thank you to professor Sterling who teaches Philosophy of Religion here at LBCC,” Aletory said.
“For me, I want to thank Professor Smith who teaches English 1 for the different ways of approach writing which helped me more,” said Ordornia.
This is the third year that the FTC has done a Teacher Appreciation event in order to remind professors that their hardwork and dedication to students has not been left unnoticed.