You can witness rivalry everywhere. It’s common in business, sports, and various organizations. Of course, schools are no exception. That’s where we learn to compete from an early age. While competition makes us perform better at certain tasks, it hardly ever teaches us to help others. So it’s surprising to see instances where kids choose to be kind to others instead of working hard to be the best. One of those kids is a student of Winston Lee.
Winston Lee is an 11th-grade teacher who loves seeing his students succeed. Recently, he gave his class a history test on World War II. As part of the structure of the test, he offered the opportunity to gain five bonus points with an extra question.
He knew his best students would take advantage of the chance to get an even higher grade, but what he didn’t anticipate was that one student, in particular, would use the bonus as a chance to help out a peer.
“One of my guys, a straight A+ guy, offers up his 5 bonus points to someone in need. Totally offering up what is rightfully his, his earning, to any peer that may have been struggling especially hard the day of the test,” Lee said.
One of Lee’s best students turned in his test with a surprising note at the bottom. It asked Lee to please give his bonus points to the student in the class with the lowest grade. His grade of 94% could have been raised to 99% if he kept the bonus points, but he wanted to give them away.
Knowing it wouldn’t be fair to give the points to a student who failed because they simply didn’t care enough to study, Lee considered giving the points to a student who had scored low on the test, but who had attended the review session offered. An experienced teacher, Lee knew that there were many reasons somebody might fail a test even though they deserved to pass.
Lee says that he did as the student asked, giving the extra five points he’d earned to a student who had scored a 58. The anonymous points donation was just enough to boost her grade to passing! “She was really thankful so it turned out great,” the teacher said. “She does not know who gave her the points.”
The gushing, emotional teacher concluded: “This note gave me so much hope. Let us all be a little more like this young man!”
What a sweet gesture! Instead of boosting his own grade to a 99, he chose to give away the “extra” to someone else. It may only be five points, but it made a huge difference in the other student’s life. We can all learn from this teen’s example and put this principle to use in our own daily lives.
Source: AWM
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