Only Worth Ten Points

Tina's Ten Points by Tom Krause

She was seventeen years old and always wore a bright smile.  This may not seem unusual – but Tina Larson was born with cerebral palsy, a condition that left her muscles stiff and unmanageable.  Because she had trouble speaking, this bright smile was the true reflection of her personality.

Tina was a great kid.  She used a walker most of the time to navigate through the crowded hallways at school.  A lot of people didn't speak to her.  Why?  Who knows.  Maybe because she looked different, and the other students didn't know how to approach her.  Tina usually broke the ice with people she met in the halls, especially the boys, with a big "Hi!"

The assignment was to memorize three stanzas of the poem "Don't Quit."  I made the assignment worth only ten points, because I figured most of my students wouldn't do it.  When I was in school and a teacher assigned a ten-point homework assignment, I sometimes blew it off.  I was expecting about the same from my students.  Tina was in the class, and I saw her normal bright smile change to a look of worry.  Don't worry, Tina, I thought to myself, it's only ten points.

The day the assignment came due, I went through my roster, and my expectations were met as one by one each student failed to recite the poem.  "Sorry, Mr. Krause," was the standard reply.  "It's only worth ten points anyway, right?"  Finally, in frustration and half kidding, I proclaimed that the next person who didn't recite the poem perfectly had to drop to the floor and give me ten push-ups.  (This idea was left over from my days as a physical education teacher.)  To my suprise, the next student was Tina.

Using her walker, Tina moved to the front of the class and, straining to form the words, began to recite the poem.  She made it to the end of the first stanza — and made a mistake.  Before I could say a word, she threw her walker to the side, dropped to the floor, and started doing push-ups.  I was horrified.  I wanted to say, Tina, I was just kidding!  But she pulled herself back up in her walker, stood in front of the class, and began again.  This time she finished all three stanzas perfectly, one of only a handful of students who did.

When she finished, a fellow student said, "Tina, why did you do that?  It's only worth ten points!"

Tina took her time forming the words, "Because I want to be like you guys — normal."

Silence fell on the whole room, until another student exclaimed, "Tina, we're not normal — we're teenagers!  We get in trouble all the time."

"I know," Tina said, and a big smile spread across her face.

Tina got her ten points that day.  She also got the love and respect of her classmates, and to her that was worth a lot more.

From a delightful little book called 
Touching Hearts, Teaching Greatness
by Tom Krause 
(copyright 2001)