Matchmaking In Class

     When teaching secondary education, one often spends the entire year with the same classes. An effective teacher is able to cultivate relationships between himself and his students, and between the students themselves. I am not the best at getting people to make new friends in class, although I do try to make a fun and friendly environment. But I sure do try hard to figure out who likes who. In fact I love it. If I have a couple of friends in the room with me during lunch, where they are sitting and working quietly, I will ask them if they have girlfriends or boyfriends, just to be awkward or to make things interesting. I can get some pretty juicy info, so I never ask if it's just one students all alone.

     I've had a few different levels of student relationships in my class. I've had two students that were best friends start dating at some point during the year. They had a lot of fun together, and actually didn't want to start dating for fear of ruining their friendship. Since they would come to my room to do math during lunch, we even talked about it a bit. They've been dating for about a year now and seem to be doing well. That was fun.
     At Lane, the community college where I teach, sometimes a guy is totally crushing and just doesn't know how to go about. He'll start sitting next to the girl and try to crack jokes or impress her. He'll buddy up with her friend in the class. He'll walk out with her. Sometimes he tries to be platonic friend. It all has varying degrees of success, but it is absurdly entertaining for me.
     I've had two students at Lane meet in my class for the first time. Around week two they started sitting next to each other. During week 8 I saw them at the mall getting ice cream together (they didn't see me, but that's because I found a great pair of bushes to hide behind). I don't know if they ever got together or what, but they were a cute couple.
     I will sometimes sit students next to each other when I make a seating chart to see if sparks will fly. This is in no way a smart thing to do to help with their learning, but dang it I need to have some fun too! I don't know if it's ever worked.
     At Lane, the community college where I teach, sometimes a guy is totally crushing and just doesn't know how to go about. He'll start sitting next to the girl and try to crack jokes or impress her. He'll buddy up with her friend in the class. He'll walk out with her. It all has varying degrees of success, but it is absurdly entertaining for me.

     My favorite of them all, however, is a girl and guy that were friends and not dating at all. My first year of teaching, up in Beaverton, Oregon, these two students shared the same desk for almost the whole year. They were seniors who got along great, worked well together and were friends outside of class, but not close friends. Around two-thirds of the way through the year I walked up to them at some point and said "I just want you to know that when you two get married, if you want me to perform the wedding because I made it happen, I can do that. I became an ordained minister online when I was 17." They laughed and told me they'd let me know.
     Something awful happened shortly thereafter. New students joined the class from other classes (this school shuffled students from term to term when necessary for scheduling). Both of them now had a good friend in the class, to whom they sat next. The first day it happened, I looked back, stopped midsentence and said "Nope. Nuh uh, no sir." They knew what I was talking about and laughed and shrugged. That was it. It was over. I was crushed. It was devastating.
   
     I hope someday some students will find each other in my class, fall in love and be together. I also hope it's because of me in some small or very large way. I also hope they acknowledge that it's because of me and thank me at their wedding or something. These are all hopes and dreams of mine.
     Also I hope that one of them grows up to do something with math or something like that too.