Monthly Archives: December 2014

Teachers Make A Difference

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2000_4_founderCharles Best & Donors Choose

“CBS This Morning,” with Charlie Rose, Norah O’Donnell, and Gayle King is my favorite news show. I enjoy the television program and tape the entire two-hour broadcast. This way if interrupted by brushing my teeth or putting in a wash, I can fast forward during lunch and view what I have missed. The show’s tag line “Real News” is evident in many segments and laughter is kept to a minimal. I love, love. Love the “90 Second Eye Opener,” that captures the day’s top stories and more importantly, special reports inform me about things I do not know about, like Donors Choose.

Donors Choose is an online charity that collects and distributes donations to public school teachers across America, so teachers do not have to take money out of their own pockets for projects.

“Teachers ask, you choose,” is their mantra.

The program was started in 2000, by Charles Best, a history teacher at a Bronx high school. He and his colleagues were spending their own money on school supplies. Best built a website for teachers to post classroom project requests and people to make donations. His peers posted 10 projects, but Charles did not know any donors, so he funded those projects, anonymously. The other teachers thought the website worked and rumors spread. Fourteen years later, $292,646,946 dollars have been raised, and 528,697 projects funded. Clearly, teachers make a difference and I recall one that made a difference in my life.

The writer in me would not let the memory rest until I found some words in which they could be expressed.

Not Forgotten  

Miss Brown, my first grade teacher listened to me, “I was absent on Tuesday, and didn’t get a wooden box.” The other students had retrieved their Mother’s Day project from the supply cabinet and sat at their desks arranging paint and paint brushes.

   She smiled and said, “I saved one just for you.”

   I thought her hair yellow, like a Crayola crayon in a package hugged by red and orange. Her blue eyes sparkled and her Pageboy haircut bounced with enthusiasm when she taught. My heart raced as she held my hand, and we walked to the back of the classroom, my attention on her penny loafers. Together we bent to look inside the cabinet, darkness prevented a good view, but as my pupils adjusted, a wooden box appeared.

Miss Brow is not her real name. I cannot remember her name only her kindness.

. . . .just saying

The Wonder of Kindness

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The Wonder of Kindness

I have been mumbling and grumbling about the sorry state of affairs the world is in. You know what I am talking about; Bill Cosby, NFL domestic abuse policy, Ferguson Mo., Republican idiotic-mess, and the final slip into insanity, Isis; who think nothing of cutting off heads.

What is wrong with these people? It is overwhelming and leaves me no energy for a decent rant. I worry too, that I am adapting an older person’s perspective; the world is coming to an end or a Chicken Little belief that the sky is falling.

Then I heard about “Wonder,” a book my ten-year old granddaughter is reading, that is so good she could not put it down, and read while walking home from the school bus stop. So I got the book, thinking we would start a Nana & Alexandria book club. “Wonder,” by R.J. Palacio, is a New York Times Best Seller and there was a wait for the book at my Library.

Book Summary: Ten-year-old Auggie Pullman, who was born with extreme facial abnormalities and was not expected to survive, goes from being home-schooled to entering fifth grade at a private middle school in Manhattan, which entails enduring the taunting and fear of his classmates as he struggles to be seen as just another student.

In this book, the heroes are kindness, courage, friendship, and character; the message about leadership and solving life problems. I could not but it down either.

The book even has a happy ending, when Mr. Tushman, the principal, gives the middle school address and quotes J.M. Barrie from book, “The Little White Bird.”

“Shall we make a new rule of life . . . always try to be a little kinder than necessary?”

Although I always make an effort to not be rude, and treat others the way I want to be treated, have forgotten to be kind and rarely, kinder than necessary.

The icing on the cake is when the Henry Word Beecher Medal is awarded to August Pullman. Mr.Tushman quotes Beecher defining greatness.

“Greatness, lies not in being strong, but in the right using of strength. . . He is the greatest whose strength carries up the most hearts.”

Auggie gets a standing ovation as he accepts the medal. It is a feel good moment for the reader and food for thought, what is kindness?

Kindness is a step beyond polite. Kindness is compassion, consideration, benevolence, goodwill, cordial, gentle, generous, decent, charitableness, sympathy, sweetness, towards others. Kindness is a wonder.

Thank you to author R.J. Palacio for giving us hope.

. . . just saying

R.J. Palacio Web site

Summary & Characters “Wonder”