Today, one of my students created a flag with paper and some magic markers.
She is my quiet student.
Sometimes she is quiet for the whole morning, sitting silently and working diligently in the sanctuary of her seat at her table.
She never speaks to me first.
She simply stands beside me and waits for me to notice her.
She stood beside me at the end of the day, just before the afternoon announcements came across the loudspeaker.
“Hey Emily,” I said. “Do you have something to show me?”
She handed me her flag.
“Wow,” I said, “Is this the flag of the United States of Emily?”
She grinned and shook her head no.
“Is it for me?” I asked.
She grinned again and shook her head yes.
“Oh,” I said. “You are a wonderful, ingenious artist, Emily.”
I treasure gifts like this, for they come from the giftedness and the hearts of the children in my Title I school and mean the world to me.
“¡Muchas gracias!” I said.
A friend taught me that the Spanish word ‘gracias’ has an element of the word ‘grace’ in it, and I use it often when someone extends grace to me.
Emily’s artwork is one of those graces.
Look at her flag.
The five stars are the first stars that appear on crisp, cold, cloudless nights when you look up at the sky and listen to the silence in absolute wonder.
The four colors are the simplicity and depth of the earth, sky, water and sunlight.
She is a silent, simple, deep and wonderful kid.
In the preface to the original edition of his book Awakenings, the great neurologist and writer Oliver Sacks wrote, "My aim is not to make a system, or to see patients as systems, but to picture a world, a variety of worlds - the landscapes of being in which these patients reside."
I’ve learned to see my students, not as individual countries, but as a variety of worlds.
What beautiful worlds they are.
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