I have sort of become the “Asian” specialist at my school, and it is a position I enjoy a lot. I guess it started with all the honors classes I have been teaching the past 20 years, which are customarily filled with lots of Asian students, including Chinese and Indian, and, to a lesser extent, Korean and Filipinos. Because those courses are so tough–and I am generally regarded as one of the toughest teachers in the school, if not the toughest–many of those students began hanging out in my office, which is large enough to contain a double-sized table with nearly a dozen chairs around it. Gradually the honors students began spending their mornings and afternoons in my office, as much because it became a place of their own in addition to being a place to work on math homework. As I began counseling them, we bonded, and eventually they became associated with me in the eyes of the rest of the school.

Inevitably, I also became the advisor of the Asian-American Club, and recently the advisor of its new offshoot, the Indian Culture Club. There is considerable overlap between the two clubs, considering the president of the ICC is treasurer of the AAC. They are both fun groups of kids, and in spite of the extra duties having both clubs in addition to the other activities I also do, I enjoy advising both of them. After all, the kids are what teaching is all about!