Touching Hearts at the End of Class
By: Curtis Kelly
No matter how much I mess up a class, ending with a touching story always gets the students to overlook my sloppiness. But, of course, that’s not why I do it. I love having my learners leave class feeling warm and happy inside, and in the process, happy they get a little English practice too.
For many years, I’d end class by telling a moving story from sources I’ve curated such as Chicken Soup for the Soul (check pages 14, 16, 18, and if you’re not hooked by them, you might be in the wrong profession). Here is another:
The Gift
Bennet Cerf relates this touching story about a bus that was bumping along a back road in the South. In one seat a wispy old man sat holding a bunch of fresh flowers. Across the aisle was a young girl whose eyes came back again and again to the man’s flowers. The time came for the old man to get off.
Impulsively he thrust the flowers into the girl’s lap. “I can see you love the flowers,” he explained, “and I think my wife would like for you to have them. I’ll tell her I gave them to you.” The girl accepted the flowers, then watched the old man get off the bus and walk through the gate of a small cemetery.
Jack Canfield and Mark V. Hansen
In more recent video-equipped classrooms, I’ve moved on to showing touching YouTube videos instead (click to watch). In fact, I have a whole folder full of touching videos here that I’d love for you to use.
Give students something touching. After all, if there is one thing we have learned from neuroscience, it is that “emotion drives learning,” as Robert Murphy always said. That positive feeling you create will not only help students enjoy your classes, but it will also make them fonder of that difficult language they are studying.
