Kimchi, not for me

This happened Thursday in my K-7 class. We were sitting on the floor to play a game with flashcards, and two of the boys were almost arguing. It ended up that one, Neal, didn't want another one, Ashton to sit beside him. I sat down and tried to explain to Neal that if I wanted to sit by Ashton but he looked at me and made a yucky face and went to the other side of the room, that I would be very sad. Neal is THE most delightful student I teach, and he's very sweet, kind, and sensitive. So he started crying. I pulled him up into my lap, and was comforting him. All the other kids in the class love him as much as I do, so they're all crowded around, trying to pat him on the back and love on him too. So I told him not to cry, that I liked him very much. I then asked each of the kids if they liked him, and they all said, "Yes, I do" (even in a complete sentence, YES!). Then I said to the other students (Neal was hiding his face in his hands and crying), "Do you know how much I like Neal?" They shook their heads. So I stretched out my arms as wide as I could and said, "THIS much!" Then, in the most moving spontaneous act done by children that *I've* ever seen, the students all got up, of their own accord, one grabbed one of my hands, then they all joined hands, and spread out around the entire classroom. They then said something along the lines of "Like Neal THIS..." (not nearly a sentence...but the kindness more than makes up for the bad English).

Then, less than 10 minutes later, when we finally got to playing the game with flashcards, one of the students (Josh is his English name) got a little sad because he didn't have as many flashcards as many of the other students. He said, "Me, no" (which means I'm not playing this game anymore) and looked like he might be about to cry and Neal (kind formerly-crying Neal) went over and made Josh take all of Neal's flashcards so that Josh would feel better. Precious...truly precious.