Instead of “Baseball Cards,” imagine if children collected “Teacher Cards”? Every week, students saved up their allowance to purchase their “Teacher Cards” and a stick of stale gum from the corner store.

This is a brief conversation I imagine students having: 

Jenn: I hope I get a Mr. McCue! You should see him hit all learning styles in one class!

Marc: Do you think I can get Ms. Erikson to sign her All-Star Card? Ya know, the one she earned for her unit on cells? 

Jenn: WOW! Mr. Whitten’s rookie card! Look at his awesome mustache!

Marc: I can’t wait until I’m older. Then I can be a teacher and I can be on one of these.

I spent my morning run thinking about how useful “Teacher Cards” could actually be. Imagine passing them out on the first day of school so that students learn about your teaching philosophy and how to get a hold of you. Prior to the first open house, now parents have more of a frame of reference as to who the teacher is. At conferences, when meeting someone you can check into what they teach, “Oh you have experience teaching Psychology? Let’s get lunch!” If the cardstock weight is right, you can also try to flick them as far as you can in the auditorium!

I decided that since I am on a rather long train ride to Philadelphia (and the wifi is on the fritz so I can’t correct research papers as planned) that I would start making them. So without further ado, please meet some of the All Stars that I work with!

Note: I will eventually make complete sets of my two departments, so fear not!