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Excerpts

Chapter 1

A Whole New World

“Mrs. Shearin wants you to come to her room. Hurry!” Marcy was out of breath from running when she appeared in my office door at the small private school where I was the curriculum coordinator. I quickly followed her through the library and down the elementary hall to Mrs. Shearin’s second-grade room. Marcy opened the door, and we stepped into a classroom frozen in awe.
Nine students stood motionless behind their desks facing the reading table in the back corner. No one moved or looked in our direction as we softly closed the door. A child’s voice smoothly intoning sentence after sentence—never missing a word—was the only sound in the room. The other children, still seated at the reading table, were no longer looking at their books but were watching in amazement as their classmate read the text flawlessly. Mrs. Shearin glanced at me with an astonished expression, nodded toward the reader, and turned her attention quickly back to her manual.
The reader was Allen, a child who entered our school after having attended five other schools in the previous two years. His records showed excessive absences, poor academic progress, and frequent discipline problems. His mother had pleaded for his admittance, citing his needs to be in a stable atmosphere and to make friends who were interested in learning. After promising to cooperate with the staff during his adjustment period and making a commitment to his regular attendance, his mother’s request was granted.
The first few weeks were difficult. Sheri Shearin was known as a consistent, loving but firm disciplinarian whose goal was restoring children to productive learning. Allen stretched all of these qualities to the extreme. In the beginning, he would sometimes get so frustrated with schoolwork that he blurted out words that would normally evoke a swift and severe reprimand. But instead, Sheri would call him to her desk, put her arm around him and say, “Those words are just not tolerated in this school. When you don’t know what to do, raise your hand and I’ll help you. Now, tell me what you are going to do the next time you feel like that.” After he rehearsed the correct procedure, Sheri would assure him that she loved him and believed in his ability to do the right thing. The rest of the class would listen to the softly spoken exchange with rapt attention, knowing that they would never get off that easy. On his third day, he punched a third grader in the stomach at recess, and his absence for the remainder of the school day was greeted with sighs of relief.
Sheri knew that she could not effect lasting changes in Allen without the understanding and cooperation of his classmates. She also knew that if they could accept him, honor his good points, and love him in spite of his difficult behavior, they would benefit even more than Allen.
Negotiating a fine line between giving Allen the attention he needed and breeding jealousy in the other students, Sheri made time for celebrating the uniqueness and individual successes of each child in the class, and the students responded with new levels of appreciation for each other. She worked hard to orchestrate chances for Allen to be successful in the eyes of the other students. She used Bible stories to teach forgiveness and compassion. She created an atmosphere in which Allen felt accepted—even when he returned from one of his frequent trips to the principal for infractions committed outside the classroom. Students who grumbled at his inattention and slow responses were quietly encouraged to be patient and helpful. Parents who asked about the new boy or volunteered in the room were drawn into the loving-socialization-of-Allen process. Sheri molded her class into a loving community every way she knew how.
Allen had just as much trouble academically as he did socially. He struggled with simple addition problems, his spelling was atrocious, and understanding the concepts of social studies was almost beyond his grasp. Including Allen in whole-group learning slowed the class down so much that sighs of impatience were regularly heard from the other students. Whenever he was asked to give an answer, everyone had to wait for him to be shown the page the class was on. But nothing seemed to frustrate Allen more than his difficulty with reading. When his turn came in the reading circle, he would stammer and stutter and his face would turn red as he struggled with all his might to make out the words. Of all the things he failed at, it seemed that he wanted to succeed at reading most of all.
And now, Marcy and I stood dumbfounded as we listened to Allen reading flawlessly from his second-grade reader. He was enraptured by the story of a little boy who had a new pair of moccasins. Maybe he felt an affinity for the boy in the story. Maybe his intense desire to read brought all his skills into focus. Maybe the love and acceptance of his teacher and classmates had finally translated into enough self-esteem for him to believe that he could read just as well as his classmates. Whatever the reason, the moment was magic—to Allen, to Mrs. Shearin, to his classmates, and to me.
Allen finished the story and turned to look at Mrs. Shearin, who had tears streaming down her smiling cheeks. She threw her arms around him in a hug of celebration. That is when the applause began.
I’d never seen anything like it before, and I’ve never seen anything like it since. All Allen’s classmates were applauding, and one by one, the remaining seated students rose to their feet to give him a unanimous standing ovation. When his teacher released him, Allen stood beside his chair and bowed deeply—something he had seen a soloist do at a musical performance just last week. That was when the cheering began.
Allowing the noise to die away naturally, Sheri joined me at the front of the room to watch, as each student congratulated Allen. One of the best readers in the class told him, “I want to read that story again. You made it sound better than when I read it myself.”
That day was a watershed for Allen. With his confidence soaring, his reading skills developed rapidly. His self-control and social skills improved steadily, in spite of occasional lapses. He gained a whole year on his skills tests during the second semester alone.
Mrs. Shearin’s students experienced firsthand the transforming power of kindness and compassion, and one more child stepped out of confinement and into a whole new world of possibilities.

Lord, let me be a
Conduit of love and confidence
To children who have known nothing but defeat.
Use me to help each child uncover
The gifts you have placed within.