"Were you Mark's math teacher?" an old man came to my office and asked. I nodded. "Mark talked about you a lot. I want to show you something," he said, taking a wallet out of his pocket. "They found this on him when he was killed in the battle. We thought you might recognize it. "
Opening the wallet, he carefully removed two worn pieces of notebook paper that had obviously been taped, folded and refolded many times. I knew without looking that the papers were the ones on which I had listed all the good things each of Mark's classmates had said about him. And that happened 20 years ago.
Mark was in the third grade class I taught. All 34 of my students were dear to me, but Mark was one in a million. Very neat in appearance, he had that happytobealive attitude that made even his occasional misbehavior delightful.
Mark also talked without stopping. I tried to remind him again and again that talking without permission was unacceptable. What impressed me so much, though, was the sincere response every time I had to correct him for misbehaving. "Thank you for correcting me, Sister!" I didn't know what to make of it at first but before long I became accustomed to hearing it many times a day.
One morning my patience was growing thin when Mark talked once too often. I made a new teacher's mistake. I looked at Mark and said, "If you say one more word, I am going to tape your mouth shut！"
It wasn't ten seconds later when Chuck shouted, "Mark is talking again." I hadn't asked any of the students to help me watch Mark, but since I had stated the punishment in front of the class, I had to act on it.
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I walked to my desk and took out a roll of tape.
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One day I decided to do something different when Mark talked again in class.
