In Oklahoma, a schoolteacher decided to bring something new to the traditional approach to education in order to teach her students an important life lesson.
This story has inspired hundreds of thousands of people around the world. Karen Lowe asked 7th and 8th-grade students to write down on paper the difficulties and problems that concern them at the moment. After that, the children crumpled up the leaves and put them in one bag, which hung at the entrance.
Thus, Karen wanted to make it clear to the students that it is worth getting rid of the accumulated negativity and not dwelling on what is destructive to your physical and mental health.
I suggested leaving the bad at the door, saying, “Don’t let the past define the present. It’s already happened. It made you who you are, but don’t dwell on it forever. You have to move on.
The lesson didn’t end there. The notes were all anonymous so the kids could take them out of the bag and read them out loud to better understand what their classmates were going through. Most of the issues were really serious and dealt with things like drugs, family drama, suicide, divorce, and more.
Usually, the teacher just walks into the classroom, says hello, and starts teaching. But there is something about a teacher’s work that goes beyond his “technical” duties. Karen Lowe sensed the tension in the classroom and decided to get creative with the problem.
We can say that the film “Freedom Writers” became the prototype of this story. In the story, teacher Erin Gruwell encountered a group of students from different walks of life, each of whom went through a difficult test in life. There was no discipline in the lessons, mainly because of the internal struggle of the children. Erin found a way to solve this problem by giving students notebooks.
She let them write whatever was on their minds, and they decided if the teacher could read their minds. Much to her surprise, many students opened up to her, which led to better rapport in the classroom.
Karen, like the heroine of the film, took the initiative to understand what her students had to face. She made sure the four walls of the classroom were a safe place for them. This is important because some students really think that school is better than home.
As Karen Lowe says, the most important thing is that children learn not to judge others, because you never know what the other person is going through. She said she plans to leave the bag hanging by the door until the end of the school year to serve as a reminder to get rid of negativity.
