I don’t know, but I think I’m a pretty good teacher. I’ve known better. I’ve seen a hell of a lot worse. I think most of my students like me. The 1st and 2nd graders jump all over me. But, there is a difference between being a popular teacher and an effective one. 
I’m not their regular classroom teacher, who is Czech and teaches them English every day and goes by the book and approved syllabus and gives them tests and grades and stuff. I’m just the native speaking English teacher the kid’s get once a week. Some classes it’s once every two weeks. So, it’s not entirely my fault that, even at the end of the year, some of them can’t complete a coherent sentence in English.
I’ve pretty much spent the whole year trying to learn all their names and make sure they know “Who, What, When, Where, How and Why.” The brighter kids are bored, the dimmer ones, incredibly, still haven’t mastered it.
Anyway, with the school year about to wrap up, and the oppressively hot and muggy weather we’ve had in Prague this week, none of them have been in the mood for serious study. So, what I did with a couple of my classes today was just to say: “O.K., since this is the last lesson, just ask me any questions you like.”
It was a bit of laziness on my part, but I thought the students would like it, too. It worked O.K. with the 7th graders. With the 5th graders, I got a lot of long hesitations and really lame questions like “What is your favorite color?”
So, with my 3rd graders I went back to my routine flash card lesson and things went O.K. Then I had, as my last class of the day, a 4th grade group. Not my son’s class, the other 4th grade group. There was nothing really wrong with the lesson I worked out for them, it was a roll the dice and ask a question game. But, their minds were elsewhere and they wouldn’t shut up, I screamed at them a few times but it was basically total anarchy in the classroom. Then, in the middle of a huge, ranting lecture about how they had to learn, not just English, but how to behave like civilized human beings and how could they possibly be, at their age (they are 10, on average) so horribly immature, the bell rang.
They were all out of the room in less than 30 seconds and that was that. Then, their classroom teacher informed me that that had been my last lesson for the year because next week will be all about turning in books and having graduation ceremonies and stuff like that.
It was an interesting year, there were some great moments and some trying moments, some successes, some failures. But, it was a pretty bad way to end it.
www.gurukalehuru.com 
Sorry to hear to that, but you as much as anyone know that you create your own reality. Trust me, they’ll remember you more over the summer than their everyday teacher. It really is that simple – don’t sweat it. You’ll know it’s true when, sometime in August, you start to remember their names – or at least a colorful descriptive nickname that you’d invented for them.
It’s very true that we create our own reality. The problem is that as a teacher, I want to create my students’ reality, and that leads to a clash of wills.