Promoting Still Thoughts in schools is an effort of the Tzu Chi Teachers Association.

Through the strength of their teaching, each sentence in this book is planted in the children's minds, and hopefully students will someday recall one of these sentences which will then help them in their lives.

One elementary-school teacher who uses Still Thoughts mentioned that one of his students gave his tuition money to him the day before registration and asked the teacher to deposit it instead in the Tzu Chi Typhoon Herb Relief Fund. The student then said something that the teacher remembers even now: "Light a lamp in the darkest corner; light a fire on the most desolate road." The tuition fee could be found somewhere else, but these excellent words should be spread.

By using Still Thoughts, teachers emphasize the education of character and the learning of correct behaviour, or education in the basics of being human. As Huang Mu-huo, principal of Wen Chuan Elementary School in Taitung, said: "The moral teachings from the past only tell us that we should be filial, but they do not tell us how to do it. Still Thoughts provides a simple, realistic way for us to follow."

On September 28 each year, people in Taiwan celebrate Confucius' birthday. Because Confucius was China's most important teacher, we also honor all teachers on this day. In order to celebrate Teachers' Day this year, we would like to share with you the stories of three teachers who treat all their students with love, allowing love to flow into their classrooms.

Hou Su-chen: Children Are Her Teachers

By Chen Yu-fang

To her, children's actions are full of purity and creativity. She learns from her students, and through them she discovers the pleasures in life.

First Love

When Ms. Hou found out that there were two love letters going around in the classroom, she thought about how to introduce the concept of loving relationships to the students. She tried to recall her own youth, which was also full of youthful passion.

One day, it was once again time for a group activity. Ms. Hou asked the students to rest their heads on their arms on their tables and to close their eyes. She began a survey of the students' feelings by first telling them that this was a safe place and that their honest replies would not be disclosed. Then, she told them that if anyone liked a boy or a girl, he or she should raise his or her hand. There came the inevitable giggles.

"When you are curious about the opposite sex, when you want to look at him or her more, and when you want to make friends with him or her, this is normal, because it indicates that you are growing up. Therefore, I am going to give you a vaccination shot." There came louder laughs.

She continued. "There are some mean people who might post your love letters on the bulletin board, so do you know how to write one so that you won't be embarrassed if it is posted? First, you should be specific in your admiration and be honest. Sometimes we see a sentence like 'I love you very much,' but the receiver of this letter is going to feel very strange and think, 'How can you love me when you don't even know me?' So, you can just write that you are really attracted to this person, and explain why you are attracted to him or her. Say that you want to be his or her friend. In addition, you can also introduce yourself. This way, you won't embarrass the other person and will convey your sincerity."

Days later, Ms. Hou received some letters from students telling her their thoughts. Other students also spoke to her personally.

Love All Living Things

In the morning, Ms. Hou says "Good morning" to each tree on the campus because she believes that all living things have souls. Before typhoons come, she especially visits the oldest tree on campus and tells him to bend when the wind comes and to be brave.

Her care for life also influences her students, who learn to care for all life. They turn fruit leftovers into rich fertilizer for a tree. Some students even told her, "The trees are moving their heads back and forth to show their appreciation!"

In Ms. Hou's school, each class has to look after a tree. Ms. Hou's students keep their window box the cleanest, and their classroom windows are also the brightest--so clear that birds accidentally fly into the windows! The students just pick up the stunned birds and place them by the window, allowing the birds to fly away when they regain consciousness. Ms. Hou's students also care about the environment . There are five students who have volunteered to sort and recycle bottles for the whole school.

Appreciating One's Good Fortune

One day when Ms. Hou saw a half-eaten bun in the garbage can, she told a story about Ethiopia. "The children over there are the same as the children here. These children also get hungry, but unfortunately, they do not have any clean food to eat. All of them are very skinny, and their inflated bellies are full of worms."

At this point, the student who threw away the bun stood up. "I didn't do it on purpose. I ate half of it and put it in my drawer, but then I forgot about it. When I remembered it, it couldn't be eaten."

Ms. Hou puts her heart into even the smallest things. Some children liked to tilt their chairs back, and they would also sway in their chairs from side to side. It was dangerous and bothered the students behind them.

Ms. Hou asked them to play a game: not to use the tables and chairs in class. At first it was entertaining for them just to walk around. Slowly, however, their legs became sore and their hands became tired from holding their books. Then they realised that it was good to have tables and chairs around. When she let them return to using the tables and the chairs, they realized what it meant to appreciate what one has.

Democracy in the Classroom

Ms. Hou feels that the biggest change in her class is in the relationships among the students. At the start, there were several exclusive cliques in the class. So she decided to change the students' seats once a month, and allowed them to express their feelings about their neighbours. If anyone was dissatisfied with his or her seat, he or she could explain why and request a new seat.

This seemed like a good idea, but then some students reported that the students behind them got their coats dirty by kicking them. She then invited everyone to find a way to solve this problem. The class' solution was to fold up one's coat and place it on the chair as a cushion. This both prevented the coats from being kicked and allowed students to sit more comfortably.

Creativity

Her forgiveness indirectly supports students' creativity. She taught the class a passage from Still Thoughts that reads, "Be someone who turns the palms downwards, not upwards." One student interjected that their hands faced upwards when they accepted gifts, but also when they were hit on their hands as punishment. Ms. Hou was not angry for the interruption, but praised the student for his wisdom .

Once when she mentioned the phrase, "strive without negligence," one student asked with a grin how they could strive and not have diarrhoea [the Chinese words for "negligent" and "diarrhoea" are homophones]. To Ms. Hou, these words demonstrated the students' creativity.

"Please zip your lips!" Her words are lively, and they indirectly start the children's association of ideas.

Although teaching is just a job and the students are obligated to study, Ms. Hou expresses gratitude to the students. "You are my parents and saviours. I thank you all for coming to school so that I can have a job. Thank you." This makes them very happy.

Mutual Assistance

Ms. Hou is partially paralysed because of spinal atrophy, but her students assist her by moving chairs, delivering messages for her, cleaning the classroom, and doing many things that do not need her supervision. It is obvious that they love her very much.

There are no gaps between her and her students, and in her class everyone naturally embraces each other and tells each other, "I love you very much!" This happens quite often.

Ms. Hou recalls a child she can never forget. He ran away from home and school quite often. Sometimes he would even eat and sleep in the classroom, trying to escape from his unbearable fate. Ms. Hou went to his house quite often and wept with him when he talked about sad things from his past. In the evening, neighbors could see their shadows, one large and one small, picking up bottles from the roadsides and chatting.

Ms. Hou feels that children with behaviour problems lack love, and they really need a lot of it. This child later said to her, "Thank you very much for rescuing me from my demons."

There was another child with good behaviour but poor grades. He was scolded quite often by his parents and thus had low self-esteem. Ms. Hou went to visit him one day and noticed that he was very caring towards his grandfather. She reminded his parents, "It is easy to raise a Ph.D. student, but difficult to raise a filial child."

Another girl looked down on herself because of her plain appearance. Ms. Hou told her, "You have a lovely voice." The girl kept that praise in her heart. She is now a university student, and she still writes to thank Ms. Hou for her kind words.

A simple word from a teacher can influence a student's future.

Window of Reflection

The sayings in Still Thoughts are a common language shared by both Ms. Hou and her students. They use it to build a warm and comfortable atmosphere in the classroom.

Ms. Hou teaches a passage from Still Thoughts every two weeks, and asks the students to copy it down in their notebooks. They also have to reflect on whether they act according to the assigned saying and write down their thoughts.

At first, the students did not know how to respond appropriately or how to act according to the teachings in Still Thoughts. After Ms. Hou suggested things like doing house chores, telling parents where they were going, and not getting angry, changes started to appear in the students. Indeed, student's parents felt the transformation was incredible.

What has Still Thoughts done to the "big kid" and the little ones? Ms. Hou said it has cured the inferiority complex she felt because of her handicap and has also brought about harmony among the children.

Now let's hear what the children have to say:

Yu-ting: "Everyone in my family likes the sentence, 'A gentleman makes only one vow, but a common man is constantly making vows.' My dad wants to lose weight, my mom wants to buy a piano, my brother is saving money to buy a bike, and I want to practice the piano. We all did it!"

Wei-cheng: "The sentence from Still Thoughts that I like is 'Being filial means to let your parents live in peace.' One time I went out to play but didn't tell Grandpa, so he went out to look for me everywhere. So now I always tell him where I am going. And there was another time I heard a neighbour kid yelling at his mom! I just wanted to beat him up, because he was such a nasty kid!"

School principal Hsu Chin-huo has been a witness to the whole year. "Ms. Hou's class has made great improvement, and the kids are very polite. They help to set up chairs for school meetings, and at lunch they say to me, 'Enjoy your meal!' I see goodness and honesty written all over their faces. I just can't leave them even after having watched them for five minutes." He said further, "Still Thoughts is an excellent book, because it encourages people to get along with each other."

Still Thoughts has opened a window of reflection, allowing children, teachers and parents to start to relate to each other with love.

Teacher

"No one is a teacher forever." These are the words that strike me the most after the interview.

Ms. Hou said that children were sometimes her teachers, because they think quickly, faster than she can follow. They even teach her the best way to use her walker!

Ms. Hou considers that "the exams and the grades of life" are the critical points in the education of a child. Thus, she places great emphasis on the formation of a child's character. She further stresses that a teacher's own concepts and attitudes are very important, because the students model their attitudes on the teacher's.

A classroom can be a haven, and children can have great fun while attending class. This is what you find in Ms. Hou's classroom.

You Chen-ching: Finding Happiness in Teaching

By Yang Ching-jung

There is a white-haired instructor who teaches Still Thoughts in the suburbs of Pingtung. His method is full of fun, and sometimes he even puts on a puppet show!

Going Out

Studying while travelling has become fashionable in Taiwan, so two fourth-grade students from Ta Tung Elementary School in Pingtung decided to follow suit by skipping classes and "study while travelling" to Taipei.

One good-hearted man saw the two runaways. He approached them and asked for their home phone numbers. He certainly did not expect their answer: "Our families are not as important as we are."

When they started fifth grade and realized their teacher was to be You Chen-ching, they asked him, "Mr. You, you are a Tzu Chi teacher, right?"

"Yes."

"A Tzu Chi teacher never punishes students, isn't that true?" they asked with intense curiosity.

Mr. You replied immediately. "A Tzu Chi teacher plays two roles. First, he plays the role of Buddha. If you behave yourselves, I will love you more. A Tzu Chi teacher also plays the role of watchman. It's like during the Buddhist seven-day retreat, if your posture is incorrect, I will swat you with a "precept club" [a wooden paddle used in monasteries for this purpose]. This reduces your bad karma. Everybody likes it."

The two students were enlightened, and the next day they presented a stick to Mr. You. On it they had written "precept club." Mr. You said with a smile, "You are good students, so I won't hit you."

Mr. You discovered that there are students who run away from home because of lack of parental encouragement. They are constantly beaten or scolded, and so they want to escape from their homes. Therefore, Mr. You uses encouragement instead of criticism with the students. He not only praises the students to their faces, but also in front of their parents. In this way, the parents get to have more confidence in their children.

Additionally, Mr. You attempts to discover good qualities in the children. He found out that the two students mentioned above were very good with music, so he allowed them to be a conductor and a drummer in the school's music band. This gave them a sense of accomplishment. These two students no longer skip classes, and their final grades are ranked second and sixth in their class. More importantly, they have begun to understand how to care about others through the love within them.

Understanding

In order to understand students' thinking, Mr. You asked them to write down in their notebooks what manner of criticism they dislike the most. The next day he read, "I hate the three-dimensional method," and "I hate the teapot method." Mr. You was puzzled at these expressions, so he asked the students who wrote them to explain.

The first student explained what he wrote. "Mr. You, whenever I make a mistake, my mom begins with 'You made a mistake again!' Then she adds, 'You never listen to what I say.' She always ends with, 'I will never have any hope for you.' Isn't this the three-dimensional way of criticizing?"

"Now I understand that." Mr. You turned to the other student. "But what is meant by 'the teapot way'?"

"My grandma always puts one hand on her waist and points her other hand at me. Doesn't this look like a teapot?" Indeed, it did look like a teapot.

While having these smart but naughty children in his class, Mr. You realized that if their characters were not well developed, they would grow up to be intelligent criminals. We have to be careful how children are educated.

Transformation

Mr. You has been teaching for 39 years. His shiny white hair and his smiling, warm face have won him the nickname "Santa Claus." But you would never guess that his colleagues used to call him "Hitler."

He had a very bad temper. When he was the school counsellor, he could become enraged easily and would criticize and insult students about every little thing. There were times that the students who were brought to him were so frightened that they wet their pants. At other times, female teachers cried when they were criticized by him.

His wife was a teacher at the same school, and she used to complain to him, "Don't be so bad-tempered, you are making me very uncomfortable." But he did not change a bit.

After he came in contact with Tzu Chi, he saw a sentence from Still Thoughts: "Even though justice is on your side, you must be soft-spoken; even though reason is on your side, you must be forgiving." Mr. You realized that these words were right, so he decided to change himself. But he still forgot under some circumstances. Later on, Mr. You taught his students Still Thoughts. In order to pretend to be a Tzu Chi teacher, he started to act accordingly, and after a while his personality really changed.

There is a Chinese saying: "When a child is three years old, you can tell what he will be like when he grows up; when the child is seven years old, you know what he will be like when he is old." Mr. You realized that since Still Thoughts could alter his bad temper, it could also correct students' behaviour problems. The personalities of the grade-school students were not fixed yet, so he wanted to plant the sayings from Still Thoughts within his students. This, he hoped, would prevent any problems from arising in the difficult teenage years. Mr. You focused on character development and chose to use Still Thoughts to teach good behavior and positive attitudes.

Parents were very proud to see their children's articles being published, so Mr. You started a class newspaper. This newspaper was totally organized by students. They did the reporting, edited the articles, and sent them to be printed. The whole process showed their spirit of teamwork. They published 100 copies at the beginning, and now publish 1,000 copies. The parents feel very positive about this, and the stories in the newspaper inspire the parents the most.

A Pure Heart

The students also came to care deeply about their teacher. One day a student brought a bottle of hair colouring to Mr. You, saying, "Mr. You, this will certainly turn your white hair into shiny black hair!"

Mr. You replied immediately, "I appreciate that very much, but my skin is so old that if I dye my hair black, my face will look strange."

The following day, this same student also brought some eggs and flour. "You can take them home and mix them with water. Apply it to your face before going to bed. The next morning, your skin will be young and beautiful. My mom does that all that time." Mr. You felt that this was both funny and touching.

Mr. You is usually the one who threatens the students, "If you don't behave well, I'm going to tell Master Cheng Yen!" When the master visited Pingtung and he brought the students to see her, he didn't expect that one student would turn the tables on him. This student said, "Master, whenever we are sick, Mr. You tells us to see a doctor immediately, but when he is sick, he never listens to our pleas to go see a doctor."

As a result, the Master immediately told Mr. You to send her a doctor's report within one week to show that he did go to see a doctor. So Mr. You just had to go visit a doctor!

"I was already planning to retire, but after I began teaching Still Thoughts, I found it to be very interesting material and I began to have a sense of accomplishment in my work," Mr. You said happily. "I'd never had this feeling before, so I decided not to retire."

Lin Chin-pa: A New Method of Education

By Yeh Wen-ying

Homework does not always mean written work. Sometimes she wants her students to give their parents a hug.

No Need for 100%

Before the end of class one day, Lin Chin-pa, the instructor for a first-grade class at Fu Hsing Elementary School in Tainan, assigned everyone their homework: "Kids, go home and hug your parents. Thank them and help them with the housework."

"Okay!" The students had no questions about their teacher's instructions. But was this "homework" easy or difficult for the students and their parents?

There was feedback the following day. "Ms. Lin, that homework you assigned I hadn't hugged her in a long time, and when she came to give me a hug Gosh, I thought they had grown up already!" The parents were very surprised at their own temporary inability to react.

The parents had different reactions towards this assignment. Likewise, they had different views on whether this teacher was too severe or too easy on the students. When Ting Jui-yen was assigned to Ms. Lin's class, his mother requested that Ms. Lin be more severe, but Ms. Lin hoped that Mrs. Ting could give the child more space.

"Is it useful for the child's character development when he gets 100%? Actually, we want the child to be mentally and physically healthy, so parents' expectations must be altered. Don't just focus on the kids' grades. Parents should not put so much pressure on their kids." It took a long time for Ms. Lin to reach an agreement with parents on their views on student homework during a parent-teacher meeting.

The students' grades can be known right away from the exams, but it is impossible to tell how the education has affected the students in the long run. Ms. Lin prefers to teach these children how to be human beings--how to be people who can appreciate their parents, who can love their classmates, and who are willing to help others.

Love Is Necessary to Be Human

When Ms. Lin teaches abstract ideas like "appreciating what one has" and "helping others" from Still Thoughts, she uses lively stories and pictures to connect the ideas with the students' daily lives. Later on, the children express their ideas in their notebooks.

"We need to appreciate what we have because people in Africa are poor. They don't have food to eat. If there is any food on the ground, they just pick it up immediately. We have so much to eat, so we must cherish it by not wasting any." Another child illustrated his ideas: he painted some black people and some rocks on the ground. There was a huge ant next to the rocks--the child supposed that was the only thing they had to eat.

"In class today, Ms. Lin brought a piggy bank and told us that we only need to put in NT$5 or $10 [US$0.20-0.40] and we will be able to help other poor people. When I got home and told my mom what the teacher told us, my mom also said that there were many poor people who needed our help. So if I have any money, I will always put it in the piggy bank, because I too want to be a kid with love."

A seven-year-old child may not know where Africa is, or he or she can only guess at what it is like to be poor when hearing that some people have nothing to eat. With the teacher's descriptions and the examples she provides, they are slowly able to understand the concept of "appreciating what one has." The children do not even know the distance between the school and their houses, but they still love to help the Africans who live so far away by donating their spare change.

The students' paintings range from their lovely homes, beautiful flowers, and parents, to the refugees in Africa. That a child who is raised in a wealthy environment is able to imagine poverty is due to the influence of education.

Ms. Lin says, "A kid with love won't turn bad." Although the children in Taiwan and Africa do not know each other, compassion knows no boundaries. Buddhism also emphasizes loving all living beings, so it is easy for us to create good relationships with other people. In Ms. Lin's class piggy bank, we see that her students' hearts have been planted with the seeds of love.

Teach With Your Heart

If we complain that our children do not understand how hard their parents work and that the children have to be paid to do household chores, or if we complain that other children are not good students because they can't sit still and are always hopping up for snacks, we should ponder the Master's words, "Adults are children's models." A child's behaviour reflects the environment we provide for them.

The students told Ms. Lin that they wanted to be useful people by doing more chores. They would automatically help to do housework, they would do their schoolwork without being asked, and they would even get up early in the morning, get themselves ready, and then wake up their mothers.

Many adults ask their children why they do not finish their rice. Ms. Lin's students, on the other hand, say, "Mommy worked so hard to cook this, and if I finish it, she will be very happy," and "It is a pity to throw it away because there are many poor people who don't have food to eat." When they go to restaurants, they also know that they should not take more than they can finish.