Thinking of Ms. S's Three Cups Classroom......One of the most fortuitously successful and really happy projects I ever got going in a classroom, when I was teaching, was when I got each of the kids one of those little pocket-sized spiral notebooks and gave them a bit of quiet time, each week, armed with those little notebooks and surrounded by a pretty wonderful selection of poetry books and books of quotations.
I essentially just turned them loose, telling them that their task was to leaf through the books and to jot down any poem or quotation that they liked, that had meaning for them, that touched them. There were no other
rules than that. And then, later, we’d share some of them, and the kids got to read some of their favorites aloud.
They went really crazy with it. I couldn't have imagined. Those little notebooks filled with their chosen treasures became very special to some of them. One of my biggest smiles in teaching, ever, was when I chanced to see one of the boys, who was usually something of a “challenge” (
cough, cough), pretending to be doing some arithmetic assignment that all the kids were supposed to be working on, but instead, he had a book of poetry in his lap, and was furtively looking down at it and scribbling something from it in his little notebook. I think it ended up being something from Langston Hughes.
Anyway, I’ve long loved quotations and (some) poetry and enjoyed scribbling them down, myself. And then saving them, and coming across those scribbled lines, totally serendipitously, years and years later. So, a few minutes ago, at two something in the morning, my time, I was thinking, once again, about Eli’s project and Ms. S’s Donor Choose classroom. I decided I wanted to make another little donation to help move things along, and went magic carpet-flying through the Internet looking for a good quotation I could put on the DC website as my comment for that donation.
Of course, I found many many more than just one. I started copying them, and that got me to thinking that maybe getting the kids to search for and share quotations and poetry about compassion and service and giving, maybe even about Pakistan and Afghanistan, etc. might be an auxiliary
project that Ms. S and the other teachers involved could tack onto the kids’ reading Three Cups and raising money through their Pennies for Peace fundraising. And, especially when it's quotations the kids are looking for, that automatically can turn into something of a biography and history lesson, too, as the kids have curiosity, as I just did with Dolores Huerta, (
whose wise observation I finally selected as the one to highlight at Donors Choose) about just who these people were who said these marvelous things....
Do all the good you can,
By all the means you can,
In all the ways you can,
In all the places you can,
At all the times you can,
To all the people you can,
As long as ever you can.
--John Wesley
If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain.
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.
-- Emily Dickinson
"My dad has always taught me these words: care and share." - Tiger Woods
“Everybody can be great... because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.”
--Martin Luther King, Jr.
“How can I be useful, of what service can I be? There is something inside me, what can it be?”—Vincent Van Gogh
“If you want one year of prosperity, grow grain.
If you want ten years of prosperity, grow trees.
If you want one hundred years of prosperity, grow people."
-- Chinese Proverb
How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.—Anne Frankand, of course, there’s my old favorite,
Raggedy Girl.
