On Wednesday, I had my last day of classes with my seniors. I write letters to my senior classes each year and hand ’em out on this day. I don’t know if they throw ’em away, or take what I say to heart, or something in between. But I don’t write it for them.
I print it out on school letterhead, and include their “Who I am” sheet they filled out on the first day of classes with an index card with goals they had for the upcoming year.
I hope they stick the letter and “Who I am” sheet in their yearbooks and forget about ’em until years later. I did that with a letter my high school English teacher gave to me, and I treasure that.
Continuous Everywhere but Differentiable Nowhere 
Sam,
You know how Riley just had that post about things that matter? That mattered. That letter inspired ME and I’ve never spent a day in your class. Thank you.
As a first year teacher (in History/Social Sciences) – your post inspired me, and I think I might do something similar :)
Your descriptions here were beautiful. I never liked math – (well, algebra, geometry and trigonometry were ok, but gave up during intro calculus!) but I’m going to make re-learning math on Khan Academy a priority.
Awwww, that is so sweet! Good luck with your first year. I wrote a letter to first year teachers that you might enjoy: https://samjshah.com/2012/06/21/an-open-letter-to-new-teachers/
And a whole bunch more are http://bowmandickson.com/2012/06/23/letters-to-a-first-year-teacher-the-compilation/