What The Duck?!

Warning From A Teacher: Beware What You Put On Your Desk

Sixteen years ago, Megan Davidhizer received a gift from her students that would change her classroom forever.

by Jamie Kenney

There’s a lot teachers have to deal with in their careers. Underfunding, standardized testing, challenging students and parents, and the politicization of their profession are all difficult national issues.

On the other hand, some of the things they have to deal with are less consequential but ever-present nonetheless. For example, classroom aesthetics, as educator Megan Davidhizer (@megan.davidhizar) highlighted in a hilarious TikTok video.

“When I went to school to become a teacher, nobody ever told me that I needed to be so careful about what I put out on my desk. Some students who, after I recently got married, gave me these two cute little rubber ducks. This one was supposed to be me, and this one was supposed to be my husband. So I put them out on my desk. You want to know what my room looks like 16 years later?”

What we see is a montage of rubber ducks. Big ducks. Small ducks. Blue ducks. Mauve ducks. Enough ducks to fill a museum of rubber ducks. Cascades of ducks. Mountains of ducks. A veritable panoply of rubber ducks.

Don’t believe me? Watch for yourself!

This phenomenon is not limited to teachers. I think every woman reaches a certain age and becomes associated with a particular item. For example: at one point I must have made an off-handed comment about how much I like hedgehogs. Well, several people have since (very sweetly) gifted me dozens of hedgehog related items. I love each one (my hedgehog salt and pepper shakers are my kitchen decor MVPs), but at this point my hedgehog collection sort of overstates just how big a role they play in my daily life.

One colleague tells me that because she loved “What The World Needs Now” after hearing it in Austin Powers as a kid, her father believes she’s a huge Burt Bacharach fan. As a result, he buys her merch for holidays and sends her news items about the singer to this day.

“I only liked that one song!” she insists.

Another colleague somehow became known for her love of miniature items — tiny versions of everyday objects — and can now expect them as little gifts for her shelf from time to time. “Mom is always coming back from trips with some teeny weeny souvenir.” At least they don’t take up room? Certainly not enough to fill multiple shelves and a large desk drawer, like Davidhizer’s ducks.

But, as with the ducks, these items are ultimately very sweet and, in a way, quite profound. They are a kind of short-hand our friends and family use for letting us know we are seen and loved. The person giving the item wants to spark a little joy in our lives because of the joy we spark in theirs. Or, as one person wrote in the comments of Davidhizer’s video:

“All I'm seeing is evidence that you're like a really, really, really good teacher.”