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[White_Elephant]

I just saw this:

"One day a teacher asked her students to list the names of the other students in the room on two sheets of paper, leaving a space between each name.
Then she told them to think of the nicest thing they could say about each of their classmates and write it down.
It took the remainder of the class period to finish their assignment, and as the students left the room, each one handed in the papers.
That Saturday, the teacher wrote down the name of each student on a separate sheet of paper, and listed what everyone else had said about that individual.
On Monday she gave each student his or her list. Before long, the entire class was smiling. "Really?" she heard whispered. "I never knew that I meant anything to anyone!" and, "I didn't know others liked me so much." were most of the comments.
No one ever mentioned those papers in class again. She never knew if they discussed them after class or with their parents, but it didn't matter. The exercise had accomplished its purpose. The students were happy with themselves and one another. That group of students moved on.
Several years later, one of the students was killed in Vietnam and his teacher attended the funeral of that special student. She had never seen a serviceman in a military coffin before. He looked so handsome, so mature.
The church was packed with his friends. One by one those who loved him took a last walk by the coffin. The teacher was the last one to bless the coffin.
As she stood there, one of the soldiers who acted as pallbearer came up to her. "Were you Mark's math teacher?" he asked. She nodded: "yes." Then he said: "Mark talked about you a lot." After the funeral, most of Mark's former classmates went together to a luncheon. Mark's mother and father were there, obviously waiting to speak with his teacher.
"We want to show you something," his father said, taking a wallet out of his pocket. "They found this on Mark when he was killed. We thought you might recognize it."Opening the billfold, he carefully removed two worn pieces of notebook paper that had obviously been taped, folded and refolded many times. The teacher knew without looking that the papers were the ones on which she had listed all the good things each of Mark's classmates had said about him.
"Thank you so much for doing that," Mark's mother said. "As you can see, Mark treasured it."
All of Mark's former classmates started to gather around. Charlie smiled rather sheepishly and said, "I still have my list. It's in the top drawer of my desk at home."
Chuck's wife said, "Chuck asked me to put his in our wedding album."
"I have mine too," Marilyn said. "It's in my diary."
Then Vicki, another classmate, reached into her pocketbook, took out her walletand showed her worn and frazzled list to the group. "I carry this with me at all times," Vicki said and without batting an eyelash, she continued: "I think we all saved our lists."
That's when the teacher finally sat down and cried. She cried for Mark and for all his friends who would never see him again.
The density of people in society is so thick that we forget that life will end one day. And we don't know when that one day will be.
So please, tell the people you love and care for, that they are special and important. Tell them, before it is too late."

http://journals.aol.com/lovewbaby/MyLife/entries/2004/10/26/dont-waste-the-chance-to-say-i-love-you/743
________

Are you ?

[Serious_Fun]

well...that story has been around the internet a few thousand times...

and that type of classroom activity has been used for student birthdays, etc. for at least 30 years...

what was the point of your post?

[Topo Gigo]

My teacher made us do that once in a last day of term English lesson. I had a lot of nice comments, but the only one I can actually remember was 'she has a nice pen'.

To this day I find it very heart-warming to think that the nicest thing someone who I shared 6 months of Romeo and Juliet with could think to say about me was that i have a nice pen.

I'm sure there's years of therapy in that somewhere. Although, to be fair, I do remember that pen, and you know what? it was nice!

[Calories]

I was told to do that sort of thing in high school. I remember writing "nice nice nice nice nice nice nice nice nice nice nice nice nice nice nice nice nice nice nice nice nice nice nice nice nice nice nice nice" when really I was thinking "fat ugly stupid retard our teacher is boring" Then I got a paper with "nice nice nice nice nice nice nice nice nice nice nice nice nice nice nice nice nice nice" like everyone else. Yay! If you're looking for something stupid to fill up class time, there's better activities than getting students to write 'nice nice nice nice nice' because you think some internet myth was cute and charming.

[denise]

I did something similar for Valentine's Day. Students had to write their own names on cards. I collected the cards and redistributed them. Each student then had to come up with a word for each letter in their classmate's names. The activity had mixed results. The students who got their friends� names of course had plenty of nice things to say, but those who got the names of students who they didn't know very well basically just thought of vocabulary words that began with the appropriate letters.

And then the girls in the class got together and made a really sweet one for me! I've still got it taped to the wall by my desk.

d

[Will.]

Nobody wrote anythng nice about me and I hate everyone because they lied when they wrote nice nice nice nice

There is a time and a place for these self/other-appreciation and self-esteem building exercises. I do, emphatically, object to them being used for religious type organisations to play on our emotions by circulationg them willy-nilly and trying to increase their standing in the publiic eye as if it were they who had invented mawkishness. I have nightmares where I am employed to slavishly copy out and vary interminably similar, or not so similar to be noticeable, copies/examples of these for circulation.
Is this what we have become?
By your actions.......

[Jetgirly]

We did this in one of my high school classes, but the teacher didn't check to make sure all the comments were positive! What was she thinking?