The Pieces of Paper...

On Tuesday, I had the pleasure of presenting a Mindfulness presentation to teachers and staff at St. Clements. It was my opportunity to share this beautiful story with them and to have them do an exercise like this. I hope that this exercise touched their hearts because this story touched my heart.

This is a story of a teacher at a Catholic school in Minnesota.  She describes an unforgettable elementary student named Mark Eklund who had been likeable but frustrating because of his inability to stay quiet in class.  The teacher transferred to teaching junior-high and later had Mark again.  One day asked everyone in the class to write down each student’s name and also write the nicest thing they could think of about that person.  Years later, the teacher got word that Mark Eklund had died in Vietnam and she was asked to attend his funeral.  Mark’s family showed her that the piece of paper from junior-high with other student’s kind remarks about him had been carried in his wallet until the day he died.  The teacher then heard that other students had also saved their pieces of paper from that day and how much it had meant to them.  The story closes with encouragement to tell people how much we care for them and how special they are to us while there is still the time to do it. ​​​(truthorfiction.com)