Close Encounters of the Third-Grade Kind (26 page)

“Correct. When someone chooses to be anonymous, he doesn’t want anyone to know that he did it. For example, if someone sends
you a valentine card and signs it with a question mark, he wants to remain anonymous.”

“Ohhhh,” said Rebecca.

I took a sip of coffee. “So, why do you think she wanted to be anonymous?”

“She didn’t want anyone to know,” Gina replied.

“Yes, but
why
?”

No one answered.

“Well,” I continued, “when you do something kind for your mom — like set the table or take out the garbage — she appreciates
it, right?”

“Right,” the children echoed.

“It feels good to do something nice for your mom, right?”

“Right,” they repeated.

I rested my elbows on my knees and clasped my hands together. “I’ll tell you something else. Whenever you do something kind
for someone and they
don’t know
that you did it, you experience a different feeling altogether — a very special, warm, happy, feeling.” I placed my hand
on my heart and patted my chest. “Right here.”

At that moment I looked over at the closet and stood up. “Wait right here.” The students’ eyes followed me as I walked over
to the back of the room. I opened the double doors, searched the shelves, then pulled out a large empty glass jar with a red
lid. I returned to the carpet, took a seat, and set the jar on the desk beside my chair. The children stared at it. On it
two words were written in big red letters:
Kindness Jar.

“I wasn’t going to show you this for a couple of weeks,” I said, “but it feels like the right time to begin.” I took another
sip of coffee. “Now, what that woman did for me at Starbucks was what we call an
act of kindness.
Do you think she wanted anything in return?”

“No,” they chorused.

I picked up the jar and set it on my lap. “Starting today, we are going to perform our very
own
acts of kindness — just like the woman in the coffee shop. Over the next week, I’d like you all to do three kind things for
anyone you’d like.” The children started chattering. “Now wait. Wait. Let me explain the rest.” They quieted down. “After
you’ve done something kind, you will write down what you did on a slip of paper and drop it into our Kindness Jar.” I held
it up and looked inside. “Do you think we can fill this up?”

Everyone answered at once. “Yeah!”

Angela sat up on her knees. “Can we do more than three things?”

“Absolutely,” I replied. “You may do as many kind things as you’d like.”

“Mr. Done,” Melanie called out, “are you going to do it?”

I smiled. “Good idea.”

“Do we write our names on the paper?” asked Joshua.

“If you’d like, but you don’t have to. You may wish to be… ” I pointed to our new word on the whiteboard and waited for them
all to say it.

“Anonymous!” they shouted.

“Very good. If you wish to be anonymous, just put a question mark on your paper after you’ve described your act of kindness.”

For the next ten minutes, we brainstormed all sorts of ways to show kindness. I cut up strips of paper and set them on the
table. After recess, there were already a couple of slips in the jar. I typed a note for the parents explaining Kindness Week.

Over the next few days, our Kindness Jar grew fuller and fuller. Each morning, I read the newest slips in the jar out loud.
If the kids signed them, I asked them to explain their kind acts. If there was no signature, I just read it and let the child
remain unnamed. Most of the kids were eager to share. David collected grocery carts in the parking lot. Laura washed her dad’s
car. Kevin watered the lawn. Jennifer brought her mom breakfast in bed: toast with chunky Skippy and raisins on top.

“My mom just about fainted,” Christopher announced as I was reading the slips of paper.

“Why?” I laughed.

“When she told me to go to bed, I just said, ‘Okay’ and walked upstairs.” He got up and acted it out. “I didn’t talk back
at all. I brushed my teeth and went straight to bed.”

I lowered my chin and puckered my lips in a goofy-looking face. “Don’t you
usually
go straight to bed?”

“Well… ,” he said, grinning.

The kids giggled.

Christopher continued. “She even put her hand on my head to see if I was sick.”

“Mr. Done,” Melanie piped up, “what did
you
do?”

“Well, I’ve done three things so far.” I counted them off with my fingers. “First, I gave an extra-large tip at a restaurant.
Second, I left change in a soda machine.”

“How much?” Trevor interrupted.

I threw him a look. “Enough for one soda. And third, I dropped some pennies on the ground.”

Danny jumped up. “At
school
?”

“No. Calm down. At a park.”

“Darn!”

By Friday, our Kindness Jar was full. I had heard from almost every student. As the kids were leaving at the end of the day,
I stopped Brian on his way out.

“Hey Brian, do you need any help thinking of something for the Kindness Jar?”

He shook his head and dashed out of the room. A few minutes later there was a knock at the door. It was Brian’s father.

“Excuse me, Mr. Done. Do you have a second?”

“Yes, yes. Of course,” I said. “Come in. Come in.”

“I’m sorry to bother you,” he apologized, stepping inside. “Brian doesn’t know I’m here.”

“Is everything okay?”

“Oh yes. I wanted to talk with you about your Kindness Week.”

“Ah yes,” I said, “I just spoke with Brian about it.”

“Did he tell you about his act of kindness?”

I looked surprised. “He
did
something?”

“Yes.”

“I thought he hadn’t… What did he do?”

“Well you see, ever since you sent home that letter, the one about Kindness Week, Brian started begging me to take him to
McDonald’s. I kept saying no. We rarely eat there. But he kept persisting. So last night I took him after soccer practice.
When we arrived, he insisted on using the drive-through. We drove in and ordered. When the woman at the window handed us our
food, Brian shouted, ‘Wait!’ Then he unzipped his soccer bag and pulled out a sack full of change. He handed it to the woman
and said, ‘This is for the car behind us.’”

I sat down on one of the kids’ desks. “Wow,” I said softly, “That’s lovely.” I paused for a moment then looked up at Brian’s
father. “But why didn’t he tell me?”

“He didn’t want you to know. He doesn’t want anyone to know. He’d be upset with me if he knew I was talking with you about
this. Brian said he wants to remain anonymous.”

“Ahh,” I responded with a nod and a smile. “I understand. But I told him he didn’t have to sign his name.”

“He said that if he wrote anything down at all, you’d recognize his handwriting.”

I gave a little laugh. “He’s right. I would.”

“When we drove away, I asked him where he got the money. I assumed it was from his piggy bank. Some of it was, but most he
raised this week.”

“How?”

“He gave chess lessons to his friends. He charged a quarter a lesson.”

“At
school
?”

“I don’t know. I assume so. When I pressed him, he said that he did not want to talk about it. He said, ‘Mr. Done told us
that if you do something nice for someone and don’t tell anyone, you get a very special feeling in your heart.’” I smiled.
“So I dropped it. When I tucked him in bed, I asked him if he experienced that special feeling that you described.”

“And what did he say?”

Brian’s dad smiled. “Well, he still refused to say. So I had to ask his teddy bear.”

“And?”

“He said yes.”

O
ne day when we were all reading
James and the Giant Peach
(each child held his own copy), I stopped after the sentence
“His room was as bare as a prison cell.”

“Boys and girls,” I said, “this is a simile. Similes compare two things using the word
like
or
as.
See the word
as
in the sentence?”

They looked back in the text. “Oh yeahs” popped up around the room.

“What two things is Roald Dahl comparing here?” I asked.

“The room and the prison cell,” Laura called out.

“Good.” I continued reading. A few minutes later I read,
“Spread out below him like a magic carpet.”
I stopped. “Here’s another simile. See the word
like
?”

They spotted it. “Yeah!”

A while later I read,
“She was like a great white soggy overboiled cabbage.”

“Simile!” Brian shouted, raising his hand at the same time.

“Very good,” I said, nodding.

“Mr. Done,” Brian negotiated, “for every simile that we find can we get a minute of free play?” I give Friday Free Time Minutes,
which we add up at the end of the week. These are almost as coveted as No Homework Passes.

“Good try,” I said, laughing.

Christopher piped in. “How ’bout for every ten similes we find, we get one minute?”

“Yeah!” they all agreed.

I thought about it for a moment.
How many similes can there be? Surely they won’t spot all of them. It might be fun.
I smiled. “Why not?”

“Yeah!”

“When do we start?” Trevor asked quickly.

I shrugged. “How ’bout now?” I looked over at Angela. “Angela, you be our recorder.” She ran to the paper basket. We resumed
reading.

Teacher Alert:
Never underestimate kids’ ability to find similes — especially if there are Friday Free Time Minutes at stake. They can sniff
them out better than a third-grade teacher can smell a three-week-old Lunchables in the back of a desk.

I couldn’t get through a single page without someone announcing, “Simile!” Every time we came to one, the kids would jump
out of their seats like jack-in-the-boxes. The farther we read, the more Roald Dahl seemed to sneak them in, too. (I swear
he was on some kind of mad simile kick when he wrote this book.)

In
James and the Giant Peach,
nothing Mr. Dahl describes is just fast, flat, high, tall, white, sharp, or furry. Oh no. Everything has to be fast like
a torpedo, flat as paper dolls, high as a church steeple, tall as a house, white as clouds, sharp as razors, and furry like
the skin of a baby mouse! Stars don’t just twinkle. They twinkle like diamonds. There can’t just be a swarm. It has to swarm
like ants. And no one in the book just jumps. They have to jump around like they have been stung by wasps!

If this weren’t bad enough, Mr. Dahl even
repeats
his similes. In chapter 11, he writes
as large as a dog
three times! Yes, three times. ON THE SAME PAGE! Why in the world would he do that? I can only think of one reason. He is
trying to help all children in the world get Friday Free Time Minutes. He is on
their
side!

Teacher Alert:
When reading
James and the Giant Peach
with your students, do
not
read chapter 11. Go to chapter 12. I repeat. Skip chapter 11. Go directly to chapter 12!

It didn’t take long for my students to become simile-crazed. They checked out all the Roald Dahl books from the library. They
pointed out similes in their own silent reading books. They started using similes in their own writing. When Laura got caught
staying up past her bedtime with a flashlight under her covers, she was reading ahead in
James
searching for similes.

One morning when I read,
“as it went sailing by,”
Kevin shouted, “Simile!”

“Not quite, Kevin. Just because you see the word
as
doesn’t make it a simile.
As he was growing up
means
when
he was growing up. Sorry. No points.”

Everyone whined.

When I read,
“‘Did you like that, James?’”
Emily spouted, “Simile!”

“That’s not a simile either, honey. Remember — a simile
compares
two things. Nothing’s being compared here. It just means that he enjoys chocolate.”

The class grumbled.

When I read,
“The boy’s a genius,”
Sarah declared, “Simile!”

“Good try, Sarah. But I’m afraid that’s not really a simile.”

“But it compares
boy
and
genius,
” she insisted.

“You’re right,” I agreed. “But a simile has to have the word
like
or
as
in it. If it said,
The boy is
like
a genius,
then it would be a simile. What you discovered is called a metaphor.”

Christopher perked up. “Can we get points for metaphors, too?”

“No.”

One morning I read,
“The Earthworm looked like a great, pink, juicy sausage.”

“Simile!” Laura boomed.

“Excellent,” I said. “Angela, write that down.”

Christopher leapt to his feet. “Wait! That’s
three
similes!”

“What?” I said, surprised.

He looked back in his book. “It’s comparing the Earthworm to three different things,” Christopher said, excitedly.

“No way,” I said, shaking my head.

John jolted up out of his chair and started talking really fast. “Christopher’s right! It says the Earthworm’s like a
great
sausage. That’s one simile. Like a
pink
sausage. That’s another one. And like a
juicy
sausage. That’s three!”

I flat-eyed him. “One. Point.”

“Three!” everyone shouted.

“No.”

More kids stood up. “THREE!”

Suddenly the music
CSI
always plays when the coroner is performing an autopsy began swelling in my head. I pictured the morning’s headlines: “Mutiny
in the Classroom,” “Teacher Flattened Like a Pancake!” “Teacher’s Last Words: I Hate You, Roald Dahl!” I gave it to ’em.

There are certain things that a teacher must never do: Never give your student the hose at a car wash. Never pour plaster
of paris down the sink. Never leave your coffee cup exposed on April 1. Never give an eight-year-old a retractable measuring
tape. (It will not retract again.) Never stand on a bathroom scale when teaching your students about pounds and ounces. Never
shout, “Hold your balls!” Never throw a wilted flower away in front of the child who gave it to you no matter
how
droopy it is. And never forget to wear green on St. Patrick’s Day.