Christine Sharpe--A Place In The Circle

We had just finished reading Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing when Mr. Kressler asked us to put our books away and take out our writing notebooks.

I was nine years old, in Grade 4, and I loved to write.

I wrote at school. I wrote at home. I made up stories constantly. I would record those stories out loud on my cassette player. I was a dreamer, the kind of kid who could disappear into something entirely imagined and stay there for a while.

Our classroom was bright and usually loud, with a wall of windows looking out onto the playground. Right beside us was the school library, which I thought was about the best possible place for a classroom to be. In the hallway between the two was a huge fish tank.

I loved that fish tank.

I spent enough time standing in front of it, talking to the fish, that occasionally someone had to come looking for me.

That morning, Mr. Kressler picked up a piece of chalk and told us we would be starting a new writing assignment. He wrote on the board:

If I Could Change the World

I don't remember thinking very hard about it. I already had a story. I knew exactly how I would change the world if I had the chance.

In my story, there were two children. All these years later, I cannot remember their names, so I'll call them Sarah and Jason.

Sarah was walking to school when she saw Jason sitting on a blanket on the sidewalk. His mother had left him there for a few minutes. It was the 1980s. Apparently neither nine-year-old me nor anyone reading my story found this detail particularly alarming.

Sarah stopped.

She asked Jason why he wasn't at school.

That part mattered to me. As a child, I had a difficult time seeing anything or anyone alone. A kid by themselves on the playground bothered me. So did a pet nobody seemed to notice. Even an abandoned toy could break my heart. I wanted someone to go over. Pick it up. Sit down. Stay.

So that's what Sarah did. She talked to Jason. Not as someone to be pitied; just as a kid who for some reason was sitting alone and not going to school.

Eventually he told her that he hadn't eaten that day and he was hungry. Sarah opened her lunch, took out her sandwich and sat down beside him. And they ate together.

I don't remember what happened after that.

Sarah presumably continued on to school, now missing a significant portion of her lunch. Jason's mother must have returned eventually. There was probably a sentence at the end explaining how Sarah had changed the world.

But what I remember is that she sat down.

When everyone had finished writing, we pushed our desks aside and sat in a circle on the floor. One by one, we read our stories. And as I listened, I began to realize I had made a terrible mistake. My classmates had understood the assignment in a way I apparently had not.

Someone was going to become a firefighter. Someone was going to become an astronaut. There were inventions and big plans. I remember at least one elaborate machine designed to solve an environmental problem, possibly acid rain.

These kids were changing the world. I had written about a sandwich.

With every story, my certainty grew. I had misunderstood the assignment. There didn't seem to be an option to pass. Each story brought me closer to having to reveal that I didn’t understand. And when it was finally my turn, I couldn't do it.

I picked up my writing book, ran out of the classroom and went straight to the fish tank.

I don't know how long I stood there before Mr. Kressler came looking for me. It was probably only a few minutes. It feels longer in my memory.

He walked over to the fish tank. He didn't tell me to go back to class. He didn't ask why I had disrupted the circle or remind me that everyone else had managed to read their story.

He asked me what had happened.

I told him I had done the assignment wrong. He asked if he could see my story. I handed him my writing book and waited while he read it.

I wasn’t embarrassed to show it to him. It wasn't that I thought my story was bad. I thought it was the wrong story.

Mr. Kressler handed the book back to me and told me he thought I should read it to the class, but he wouldn't force me. I told him I couldn't. Everyone else had written about big things. They were going to save people and invent things and solve enormous problems.

All I had written about was a kid who shared a sandwich.

Mr. Kressler asked me a question.

Had someone in my story changed the world?

Not really, I told him.

Sarah had shared her sandwich with Jason. Maybe she had helped him, but she hadn't changed the world.

Then Mr. Kressler offered another way of looking at it.

What if everyone did one small act of kindness? Maybe one sandwich wouldn't change the world. But what might happen if everybody did something?

I still couldn't read the story. So he did. I waited in the hallway until it was over.

I don't know what happened in the classroom before I came back. Knowing nine-year-olds, I suspect Mr. Kressler may have offered a little guidance about how my story was to be received.

Whatever happened, they were kind to me.

More than forty years have passed since that morning.

I became a teacher and, eventually, a principal. I have spent most of my adult life in schools. I have sat beside children having hard days and watched young people try to figure out whether what they have to offer has a place.

I became a writer, too.

It took me years to understand just how much teaching Mr. Kressler did in those few minutes beside the fish tank.

He didn't tell me the other stories were wrong. Firefighters change the world. So do astronauts and scientists and people who invent things that solve enormous problems.

He simply made room for my answer too. Isn’t it interesting what memory chooses to keep?

I don't remember what I called the children in my story. I don't remember how it ended. I can't tell you which classmate wanted to become an astronaut or who invented the machine that was going to save us from acid rain.

But I remember Sarah stopping.

I remember that she didn't just give Jason half a sandwich and keep walking.

She sat down beside him.

And when I ran from the circle because I was certain I had brought the wrong story, I remember standing alone beside a fish tank. I remember Mr. Kressler coming to find me. I remember him staying long enough to listen.

And I remember what he helped me understand that day.

Maybe changing the world wasn't only about the big things one person could do.

Maybe it was also about the small things all of us could do.

~The End~

Christine Sharpe is an educator and writer from London, Ontario, Canada. She has spent nearly three decades in public education as a teacher and school administrator. Since 2017, she has written personal essays on her blog, and in 2020 independently published 45 Days of Courage, a small collection originally created for her grandmother. Her writing explores ordinary moments, human connection, and the small ways people care for one another.