At St Timothy’s, we have a dining program (which serves great food by the way). We also have a pretty cool system for our daily lunches. Each teacher is assigned a table that is theirs, mine is Table 9, and every two weeks a different group of students is assigned to sit on your table, so that by the end of the academic year you’ve had lunch with most of the student body!

I love my table! I use those lunch time student rotations to get to know students I don’t teach or build stronger rapport with students I do teach…

About two weeks ago, a student I teach came up to me during lunch time saying “Mr Elashiry, quick quick tell me something good! I’m having a terrible day!”

I panicked and felt like I was put on the spot and I too was having a somewhat challenging day, but I found myself asking her “have you had bad days before?”, to which she replied “yes”… Then I said “sometimes these bad days turn into bad weeks or bad months even, but eventually you end up having a good day or good week or good month right?” She replied “yes!”

I said “and there’s something good for you! No matter how bad a ‘bad day’ is, eventually it’ll pass and you’ll have a good day!”

Another student heard the conversation and said “wow Mr Elashiry, you should write a book!” We laughed initially, but eventually this YouTube channel was born as a result: Table 9 – Conversations at Mr Elashiry’s Table!

Check it out! I’ve posted episode one and will try to post an episode weekly, focusing on the issues teens face in their daily lives and how we can give them a ‘positive spin’!

I’m excited about this project 🙂