While walking the halls and attending her classes at North Caroline High School this past semester, Bailey Bodine perceived that many of the teachers just didn’t look as happy as they usually did. The events of the last two school years seemed to have taken a toll on them as they tried to continue educating students through virtual classes and school shutdowns.

“I felt that the teachers weren’t as happy as they used to be. I said to myself that I had to come up with a good idea to make them smile again,” said Bailey, a 10th-grader at the Ridgely school.

Bailey came up with an item everybody loves, as well as one befitting the region – toy rubber ducks – to aid her efforts. “Since we live on the Eastern Shore, I thought it was a good idea to use ducks to (lighten things up),” she said.

She got some help from her mom, Michele, who helped her go online and find a company that sold the small toys in smaller quantities. They ordered 108 ducks, approximately the number of staff members at the school. “We gave out 107 ducks, there is one left,” said Michele, who gave Bailey the money to buy the ducks.

“There were several different kinds of ducks,” said Michele. “She was going to sneak into each teacher’s room and put the duck on their desk.”

“I wanted to surprise them by putting them on their desks, but I was told I couldn’t do that, so I had to find out another place to put them,” said Bailey, who asked her class advisor, Ms. Sullivan, for any ideas she might have.

“I was told I could put them in their mailboxes in the office. She helped to get them all in the mailboxes so no one would see us doing it until they came to check their boxes.”

Bailey chose May 6 during Teacher Appreciation Week to give out the ducks. As the teachers went to their boxes, smiling faces began to pop up around the school.

“In these times, it was a ray of light for them,” said principal Matt Spiker of teachers’ reactions. “It was a small token that said to them ‘you are doing a good job.’”

“It let them know that someone appreciated them, that what they did was meaningful and that their hard work was noticed. Over the last year and a half, teachers have worked very hard. Coming from a student, signs of appreciation are not shown to teachers that often.”

Bailey said she received a lot of appreciative texts and e-mail from many teachers thanking her for her gesture. “I have gotten a lot of thank you’s and several teachers told me that the ducks brought smiles to their faces,” Bailey said, her mission accomplished.

According to Spiker, Bailey’s showing her appreciation isn’t that far-fetched. He rarely comes in contact with Bailey, who was a member of the track team and now holds the position of football team manager.

“Luckily, I don’t know Bailey that well because she never gets in trouble,” Spiker said of the above-average student. “I do know she works hard and makes good grades. She makes her voice heard in a quiet way.”

Michele Bodine said her daughter wasn’t looking for any publicity for what she had done. “She just wanted to do something nice for the teachers. I don’t think she was looking for a lot of attention,” Michele said.

Bailey said that she told just one other student, a good friend, what she wanted to do “just to see if she thought it was a good idea.”

Now, a month after her show of appreciation, the little toy ducks have found several different homes. “Some of them you see on the teachers’ desks, some of them they have taken home and put in a place where they display other gifts they have received from students.”