Lesson57 Value of Praise
Sister Mroslas, in 1962, was a teacher at St. Mary's School in Morris, Minnesota.
One of her students was called Eklund and he was handful. He often got in trouble. But Sister Mroslas liked him. Sometimes she laughed even as she punished him.
And he was very polite. At the end of every day he would tell her, "Thank you for teaching me."
One day the students in Sister Mroslas's math class were feeling down. They were having a hard time understanding algebra.
Sister Mroslas tried to think of a way to make them feel better about themselves. She told students each to pull out a sheet of paper. On it, they wrote the names of all the other students in the class. Next to each name she told them to write something nice about that person.
Sister Mroslas collected the slips of paper. Later, she made a list for each student of the nice things their classmates had said about them. She handed the papers out during the next class.
Nine years later in 1971, Eklund died while serving as a soldier in Vietnam. Sister Mroslas went to his funeral. While she was there, Eklund's father showed her his son's wallet. In it was the piece of paper she had given him with his classmates' nice words on it.
Some of the other class members were also at the funeral. One after another, they revealed that they still had their pieces of paper, too. One person had put his in his wedding album.
Another kept hers in her diary. Yet another kept his in his wallet just as Eklund had done.
"That's when I finally sat down and cried," Sister Mroslas said.
handful 难控制的人
赞扬的价值
1962年，莫罗斯修女在明尼苏达州莫里斯区的圣玛丽学校教书。
有个叫埃克伦的学生很难管，经常惹麻烦。但莫罗斯修女喜欢他，甚至惩罚他时，有时她还会笑。
而他很有礼貌。每天放学时，他会对莫罗斯修女说：“谢谢您的教导。”
有天，在莫罗斯修女的数学课上，学生情绪低落。他们在理解代数时遇到了困难。
莫罗斯修女尽力想办法让学生们对自己感觉好一些。她让学生每人拿出一张纸，在纸上写出班里所有学生的名字，在每个名字旁边写上这个同学的优点。
莫罗斯修女把纸条收上来。之后，她为每个学生做了一个单子，上面是其他人写的该同学的优点。再上课时，她把纸发了下去。
9年后的1971年，埃克伦作为一名士兵死于越南战争。莫罗斯修女参加了他的葬礼。她一到那里，埃克伦的父亲就让她看儿子的钱包，里面是她发的写有同学对其表扬的话的纸。
班里的其他同学有些也参加了葬礼。一个接一个，他们也透露自己仍保留着那张纸。有个学生把它放进了自己的婚礼纪念册。另一个把自己的收在日记中。还有一个像埃克伦一样放在钱包里。
“那时我终于坐下来哭了，”莫罗斯修女说。 |