friends

i love my friends. each one holds a special place in my heart. some of them are family members whom i've come to know as friends, my sister and aunt are two. some of them are people with whom i've shared so much time and experience that they feel like family members. some of them i've met at special times in my life and we've formed great connections. i don't get to see them all as much as i'd like. days, months, sometimes years go by between visits. they are no less dear to me. if you are my friend, please know i think of you often whether i'm in touch or not and that my life is better because i know you.

i bring up friends now because this is the time of year that i love to do a friendship lesson with students. in fact, it is a nj health curriculum standard to teach the importance of friendship.

we talk about why friends are important. they have fun with us. they share good times and bad. they help us when we need them. they laugh and cry with us. they enrich our lives.

then i do an activity i got from an idea in an email forwarded story. i give each student a paper with the names of all of their classmates. i ask them to choose one kind word to describe each person on the list. the idea being: to have a friend, you need to be a good friend. one way to be a good friend is to use kind words. they can write a kind word for themselves, too. we must treat ourselves as well as we treat others. next, i take the papers home and type for each student a list of all the kind things people wrote about them. i hope each one feels a little better about themselves than before the activity.

it is my aim, as a teacher and a friend, to make each person i know feel good about themselves. i hope i can spread that feeling to all who read this blog.

to encourage you to use kind words, i've provided a list near the bottom of the page.