Thank you

Some of my students say "thank you" after every class, even after I have just given them an in-class essay for which they did not have enough time. I wonder how they learned to thank their teachers, and did they always have something for which to be thankful, or is it just a virtue of the school they go to now? I was often thankful for my English classes when I was in high school; I was thankful for reading Kafka and other existentialist writers in a world lit. unit of my English literature class (whereas the Turkish lit. classes often sucked; we frequently learned about authors rather than read books by them). I was thankful for being able to do an I-search project on pornography in Izmir (since then, since I interviewed a sex toy shop owner in a grungy industrial area of the city, my English teacher has decided to request parent signatures on the I-search interview site contract). I was thankful for reading "Macbeth." It took me about seven years to go back to Turkey and thank my teachers in person, however. It took me being a high school English teacher myself to say "Thank you" -- way after class.

I wonder where my students will be seven years from now.