There’s a terrific short poem in the NYT magazine this morning entitled Small Kindnesses. For advisory tomorrow, I’m going to have the kids re-write this poem and set it in our school. What are the ways that you see kindness in the day-to-day? What are the actions they see all the time? At lunch? In the hall? In a class? What kindnesses do we want? For the last line, what are the things that create the “true dwellings of the holy” that we hear kids say all the time? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I might create a template where several lines are kept — the line about the plague and the line about having so little of each other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here’s the whole poem: <\/p>\n\n\n\n
By Danusha Lam\u00e9ris<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say \u201cbless you\u201d
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. \u201cDon\u2019t die,\u201d we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don\u2019t want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, \u201cHere,
have my seat,\u201d \u201cGo ahead \u2014 you first,\u201d \u201cI like your hat.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There’s a terrific short poem in the NYT magazine this morning entitled Small Kindnesses. For advisory tomorrow, I’m going to have the kids re-write this poem and set it in our school. What are the ways that you see kindness in the day-to-day? What are the actions they see all the time? At lunch? In … Continue reading advisory activity<\/span>