"Thanks for your alternative teaching"

When a student has a positive comment about my teaching, that is often enough to carry me through the term.

We are barely at the halfway mark this term.  Class ended and students were rapidly exiting the room, when one student, while slowly packing up her backpack, said "thanks for your alternative teaching. I really like this."

It caught me off guard for a simple reason that while in the past I have heard comments that my approaches are not quite conventional, nobody had ever complimented me on my teaching as an "alternative" style.  I suppose I am "alternative" even when many of my colleagues mistakenly think that I am a rabid Republican!

I wanted to make sure I hadn't misheard the student. "Say that again" I told her as we both stepped out of the room.

"I just wanted to say that I like your alternative teaching style."

"Oh, thanks, if you think this is an alternative style, then you will like all my classes--they are all the same way" I said.

"I feel like puking when I see scantron sheets" I added.

"Me too. I thought I was the only one who felt that way" the student responded.

Such compliments, from those who truly matter, more than compensate for the "please shut up" that I hear from my faculty peers who simply couldn't fathom why I wouldn't shut up and sign the f*ing form :)