When students get angry I sometimes let them break my pencils while taking deep breaths in their nose and out of their mouths. I ask them to break it as much as they can until they feel calmer.

Today I placed this kiddos broken pencil in a bowl until he visited again later in the day. When he entered my class, I asked this sweet child what shape he would like to design. He was confused at first but after a few suggestions he said “maybe a heart”. I grabbed the bowl of broken pencil pieces and asked the student to start this art project. I handed him glue and the color of paper he had chosen. This was the outcome.

The lesson we learned is that beauty can be found in the broken pieces of our lives. There are so many things that are out of our control. Those things can leave us with fragments of something that use to function differently, maybe it was even better and more productive in its prior state. Your choices are slim as you can either leave the brokenness for the trash bin or you can reimagine it into something beautiful!

Broken and Beautiful

#brokenpencils #simplyencourage