Friday was interesting. The girl with the arms was sober and bleak all day. I tried to do little things to get her to smile, but nothing seemed to work. The guidance councilor talked to me, and apparently she had over 50 slits on her arms. She did them with a paper clip, and they were merely scratches, but it is the whole intent behind it that bothers me.
So in science the past few weeks, we are learning about stars and space and galaxies and such. So I wanted to mix up the lessons and have them do a project. They were assigned to create a constellation and write a myth about how it came to be in the sky. They of course had to add scientific stuff, but for their myth they were allowed to be as creative as they wanted. I was truly impressed at how seriously all the kids took the project, and the creativity that flowed through them as they worked. The one that got me though was the one how was the "cutter". For the sake of the blog, we are going to call her B.
B called me over and asked me to read her myth before she typed it up. She wrote a story about how she planted a garden, a seed for every person that she has ever met. And each seed grew into the plant that represented how that person treated her. While all of her seeds didn't grow, one seed did: and it was the seed that she planted for me. Her constellation is of a rose in the sky, and its called "Jillianous". The moon asked to have the rose in the garden because it reminded him that there was beauty in the human spirit, and that all hope in humanity was not lost. That there is kindness and love and that when people see the rose that they should be reminded of this.
Needless to say by the time I was done reading this, I had tears rolling down my face at an uncontrollable rate. I just gave her the paper back and gave her a hug. I found that I had no words to say, and that I was so overwhelmed with emotion of the whole thing, especially since I knew how things were going at home.
5th grade.
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