Mug Mugshot

So, I like mugs.

I have since I bought this little fella earlier this year from the reduced Christmas sales.

Cute right?!

 I may or may not have a virtual mug collection on eBay. Take of that what you will.

So instead of drowning myself in my own mugs, I like to buy mugs as gifts. I don't know if that's my way of justifying buying mugs or if it's become something instilled into me now that I'm a fully fledged tea-drinking teacher; probably not the latter.

But just look at these quirky little things!

So this one I bought for a teacher who taught taught me at sixth form. In the last few weeks of my teacher training, you are given the opportunity to "enrich" yourself. So I thought I'd return to the sixth form and work alongside the teachers who inspired me to go into the field. And might I add, if you ever have the opportunity to work alongside the people who inspired you to do what you do:

It's an invaluable experience and for me, it was just such a nice way to end my own teacher training to work alongside the teachers who taught and inspired me.

Anyways, back to the mug story. So yeah, I bought that mug for him because one, he's a computing teacher if you didn't already figure with the geeky code plastered over it and two, we both worked on a programming solution to a GCSE qualification together so this was like a little nod towards that. Plus, he loves coffee.

Again computing themed, this was bought for another computing teacher who also taught me at sixth form which I then had the opportunity to work alongside. The one that I bought was a blue version of this one. He was incredibly complimentary when I was working alongside him, which I never know how to react when receiving a compliment..."That looks good." "Yes."...*awkward shifty eyes*

Surprise surprise, another computing mug for, you guessed it, another computing teacher who taught me and then I got to work alongside her. This particular teacher has actually taught me when I was in high school as well so it was incredibly lovely to work alongside herself and then let her see me teach also! One of her favourite topics to teach was HTML which is a language that is used to program websites. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a HTML based mug so this I.P. address one just had to suffice. However, the reaction I got when she saw the mug was amazing! She loved it!

My final mug purchase was not for a computing teacher, which you may or may not be pleased to read, but it is for a friend of mine who was also teacher training this year. She was training as a primary school teacher and I can gladly announce, she too is now a fully fledged teacher! So to gift her on surviving the PGCE year, I have bought her this mug. I've yet to give this to her but I'm hoping she'll like it. Throughout this year, we've rang each other something like once a week every week to offload, rant and quite frankly, keep each other sane. This mug particularly fits her because for once in her life she got mega stressed, which is not usually her, hence the Keep Calm and to add to that, the lesson plans that she had to do was insanely, several pages long for each lesson. So that's the little nod to that.

Lo and behold, I too was given a mug as a gift for my teaching adventures and isn't it the cutest!

How coincidentally funny - when I opened this gift, I was smiling so much, one because it's so cute! But two because in my bag, I too had bought them mugs! We were just on the same brainwave. They mean a lot to me because they are the very people who inspired me to go into the teaching career that I'm in, in the subject that I'm in. So these mugs are only a very small token of my appreciation and thanks to them!

I can only hope to be even a fraction of how inspiring they are to me to my own pupils who sit in my classroom!