Notes From Public School - Day 142

One of my favorite writers is Kate DiCamillo. 

She once said, “Writing is seeing. It is paying attention.”

I love her novel The Tale of Despereaux.

She really saw and paid attention there, I think.

I try to teach my students to walk around in the shoes of the characters in the stories they’re reading. 

When I read this book, I discovered that my feet fit Despereaux’s shoes well.

I so identified with the little mouse on his big quest to rescue a beautiful human princess from the rats that at the end of some of the chapters I found myself with tears rolling down my cheeks.

“Yes,” I thought, “I would have thought...I would have done...I would have seen…exactly the way Despereaux did.”

As a writer I agree wholeheartedly with DiCamillo.

As a teacher I do, too.

Writing is seeing and paying attention.

Teaching is seeing and paying attention.

Here is one thing I saw and paid attention to today.

One of my students has a younger brother who is autistic.

He is in one of the four exceptional child classes at my school.

I check in on our exceptional children and their teachers first thing each morning.

I give a fist bump to every person and sit down to talk and eat with them.

This morning, I looked up and there was my student, her left arm around her little brother’s shoulder, helping him with his breakfast.

He is non-verbal, but his face spoke a thousand words as she leaned over and tenderly kissed his cheek before heading down to the 4th grade hall to begin her day with me.

His face spoke, “My sister loves me,” and his smile shone throughout the school cafeteria as if it were a shining light.

It was a light.

His smile.

Her act of kindness and love.

My student might make an A on a standardized reading test on a random day in her 4th grade year.

Or she might make an F.

But these academic measurements cannot measure the depth of her heart and the beauty of her life.

Her heart is deep and her life is beautiful.

See.

Pay attention.