One day, a math teacher from Minnesota gave her students the following assignment.

One day, a math teacher from Minnesota gave her students the following assignment.

One day, a math teacher from Minnesota gave her students the following assignment: 

make a class list, think about what they like most about each of their classmates, and write down this quality next to their last name.

At the end of the lesson she collected the lists. It was on Friday.

Over the weekend, she processed the results and on Monday distributed to each student a piece of paper on which she listed all the good things that their classmates noticed in him.

The guys were reading, and here and there a whisper was heard: “Is this really all about me? I didn’t know I was loved so much.

They didn't discuss the results in class, but the teacher knew she had achieved her goal. Her students believed in themselves.

A few years later, one of these guys died in Vietnam. He was buried in his homeland, Minnesota.

Friends, former classmates, and teachers came to say goodbye to him. At the wake, his father approached the math teacher: I want to show you something.

From his wallet he took out a piece of paper folded in four, frayed at the folds.

It was obvious that it had been read and reread many times.

They found it in my son’s things.” He did not part with it. Do you recognize?He handed the paper to her.

This was a list of positive qualities that his classmates noticed in his son.

Thank you very much,” said his mother. “Our son treasured this so much.”

 And then something amazing happened: one after another, my classmates took out the same sheets of paper. Many always kept them with them, in their wallets. Some even kept theirs in a family album. One of them said.