Candles and Renewal

[Ebony AKA AngieJ]

In honor of the release of the Comic Relief HP textbooks today, I 
wanted to post a poem and a story that always get me all weepy.  Both 
are by Sharon Draper, 1997 U.S. Department of Education Teacher of 
the Year.  Ms. Draper is also an award-winning YA novelist.  (Yes, 
she's my role model.)

Every person who works with children and teens should purchase Ms. 
Draper's book "Teaching From The Heart".  It's awesome--just the sort 
of thing you want to read for a little pick-me-up on those Jonah days.

The poem, "Candles", always reminds me of all children everywhere.

Candles
--by Sharon Draper

This candle is Donna who is hurting and thin.
This candle is Tina who tries
but can never figure out the factor of ten.
This candle is Lisa who lies.

This candle is Robert who lives on a farm
and Leon who lives all alone.
It's Mona and Alex and Buddy and Kim
whose gang friends have turned them to stone.

This candle is Aswad and Chengli and Raul
And Kelly and Kathy and Jean
who share the same classroom and same childhood fears
of monsters or hunger or dreams.

This candle is teachers, who stay late at night
grading papers or coaching a game,
who never get glory or thank-yous or chalk
but always live up to their name.

If the glow from one candle can brighten a room
the glow from three million can blind!
And when one student smiles and says, "Hey, now I get it!"
That candle makes all of us shine!

===
Ms. Draper always tells stories when she speaks, and this next one is 
my favorite.  It reminds me of the poem, "The House By the Side of 
the Road"... can't remember the poet right now.  In "Renewal", Misty 
is the archetypal child.

Renewal
--by Sharon Draper

On the outskirts of the town in which a tiny girl named Misty lived, 
an old man, the oldest in town, labored alone near a large chasm.  
His back was bent with age, and his movements were slow and sometimes 
painful.  But every day he could be seen, cane in one hand, hammer or 
saw in the other, trudging slowly to the spot near the wide valley.

He cleared bushes, chopped trees, and sawed them into planks.  Every 
day he worked silently in the hot sun or the cold rain, oblivious of 
travelers or distracters.  Gradually it became clear what he was 
doing.  He was building a bridge across the chasm.

Little Misty rode her bicycle to that place one day.  She watched the 
old man work, then asked him, "What are you doing, sir?"

The old man stopped his hammering and smiled.  "You are the first one 
to ask me what I'm doing," he declared.

"So tell me," Misty repeated.  "What are you building?"

"I'm building a bridge," the old man said proudly.

"Why?" Misty asked bluntly.

"To build a path to the other side," the old man replied with just as 
much bluntness.

"But you're *old*," Misty continued with the honesty of a 
child.  "You won't have much chance to go on to the forest on the 
other side of the chasm."

"You're right," the old man agreed.  He was smiling.  "I'll have very 
little need and very little reason to ever go across this bridge."

"So why are you building it?" Misty asked.  "Isn't that just a waste 
of time?"

"No, my child," the old man replied, ever so gently.  "I'm building 
this bridge for you."
-------------

Thanks to Joanne Rowling, who is a world-famous author with a 
teacher's heart inside.  It thrilled me to no end to read in the chat 
transcript that if she wasn't famous, she'd be teaching French in 
Edinburgh.  :-)

And continued grace and peace to all those the world over who have a 
heart for children.

--Ebony AKA AngieJ

"Dear Lord, be good to me...
The sea is so wide and my boat is so small."
--Motto, Children's Defense Fund, Washington, D.C.