Chicken Soup for the Soul Celebrates Teachers Read Online Free PDF

said something REAL, and there wasn’t a doubt
    Our collage was what everything’s really about.
    You may well suppose that the thing was a mess,
    But we loved it and called our board “WONDERFULNESS.”
    Ellen T. Johnston-Hale

MRS. KEELING’S CLASS
    A teacher did a number on my heartstrings with an “end of school year” gift when my daughter Mimi was in the second grade.
    It was the first year wheelchair-bound Mimi, a lovable child of very few words, was placed in a homeroom class with “normal” children. Even though she had attended the same elementary school for several years, Mimi had not had the opportunity to mingle much with the regular education students.
    Her homeroom teacher, Mrs. Keeling, made her an integral part of the classroom activities very naturally from the first day, and after a few weeks invited me to talk to the students. She called it a “teachable moment” since her students asked questions about Mimi that she couldn’t answer. They asked me stuff like, “What does Mimi like to do for fun? What is she saying with her hands?” Although our daughter is not deaf, her classmates learned that special-needs children are often taught sign language to express themselves.
    I called the moment a turning point in Mimi’s life. I think for the first time her peers thought of her as a “kid in a wheelchair”
    instead of a “wheelchair with a kid in it.”
    It was a very good school year. Mimi started receiving little notes in her wheelchair backpack from a boy in her class named Joe, often with mazes for her to solve. Because Mimi couldn’t read or write, I started sending him notes and signing them with Mimi’s name. They often included little tidbits about what Mimi had done over the weekend. I think he knew who was really sending them, but Joe never let on. It wasn’t until a couple of years later that I learned from his mother that Joe had been the new kid in class that year and was having a difficult time making friends.
    The school year ended with a traditional second-grade program where children honor their mothers. The festivities ended with each student coming before the audience and announcing in a loud, clear voice,“I love my mother because. . . .” The student then found his or her mother in the audience and handed her a single flower.
    I was sitting there with tears streaming down my cheeks, not only because it was so sweet, but silently grieving because Mimi would never be able to tell me with words why she loved me. At that moment in my life, I was probably between denial and acceptance over her disability, and that added to the emotion of the event.
    As it turned out, Mimi was saved for last.
    Mrs. Keeling wheeled her to the front and—in a very natural way—announced why Mimi loved her mother and then handed me a flower. You know, I don’t remember the exact words Mrs. Keeling spoke. I’m sure the renewed gush of tears must have affected my hearing. It was then that I realized Mimi tells me many times every day why she loves me. She has simply replaced the words with two thin arms gripped tightly around my neck.
    Over the next three years while Mimi attended the elementary school, I came to know many other wonderful young students who reached out to our daughter. They assisted her with lunch, helped her play tetherball on the playground and came into the special education room to play board games.
    It wasn’t long before everywhere our family went in the community, Mimi had a school buddy coming up to give her a hug.
    My husband would often ask, “Who was that?” And I’d just smile and say, “I’m not sure about that one. Must be one of her friends from Mrs. Keeling’s class.”
    Dixie Frantz

PETALS OF THANKS
    O ne of the most difficult realities about the teaching profession is that we seldom know if we have made a difference. When I become frustrated