Planting Seeds For The Future:
Mark was a student at St. Mary’s School in St. Paul, Minnesota.
One Friday, everything seemed to be going wrong. Mark’s teacher remembers, “We had worked all week on this new concept of maths. I saw that the students were frustrated and discouraged. I had to stop this crankiness before it got out of hand, so I suggested a break. “Put away the maths books,” I said. Then I asked them to make a list of names of students in the class and to leave a space between each name.”
Then, the teacher asked each student to think of the nicest thing they could say about each of their classmates and write it down. It took the remainder of the class period.
That Saturday, the teacher wrote down the name of each student on a separate piece of paper, and then she listed what everyone had said about that individual. And on Monday, she gave each student his or her list. Those lists became tiny seeds of the future – seeds of what each student was to become.
No one ever mentioned those papers in class again. The group of students moved on, and so did the teacher.
Years passed, then one night while coming home after a long trip, the teacher called home and learned that Mark had been killed in Vietnam. The funeral was the next day and his parents wanted her to attend. She recounts the following events at the funeral:
One by one, those of us who loved Mark walked by the coffin. I was one of the last to walk by. One of the pallbearers asked if I was Mark’s maths teacher. I nodded, as I continued to stare at the coffin. “Mark talked a lot about you,” the soldier said.
After the funeral, most of Mark’s former classmates gathered at Mark’s house. “We want to show you something,” Mark’s mother whispered to the teacher. “They found this paper inside Mark’s wallet.” The old notebook paper had been taped and folded and re-taped many times. It was that old list they had made in maths class. Mark’s mother continued, “Thank you for doing that. As you can see, he treasured it.”
Mark’s classmates gathered around. Charlie smiled and said, “I still have my list in the top drawer of my desk at home.”
Chuck’s wife said that Chuck had asked her to put his in their wedding album.
“And I have mine, too,” Marilyn said. “It’s in my diary.”
Vickie reached into her purse and pulled out her wallet and showed her torn list from the class. “I think we all kept our lists.”
Mark’s teacher was remembered, not because they learned maths skills, but because she planted seeds of the future in the lives of her students. And, she showed them how to do the same.
What’s in your wallet?
This is part of an article written by Ron Rose – Planting Seeds for the Future.
We are delighted to have received permission to reproduce this article from Phil Ware
Daily Heartlight.
Thank you Ron and Phil.