CHARLIE'S REWARD
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Charlie�s Reward By Darryl McCollum At a school not far from here, there are two classmates, Suzie and Charlie. These two kids are as different from one another as two kids could get. Suzie is smart, and she knows it. Charlie is smart too but he is so shy, nobody believes it, not even Charlie sometimes. Suzie is slender and pretty and she knows it. Charlie is a bit round with freckles and since he lost his front teeth, he feels awkward and ugly so he sits away from the rest of class whenever possible. All of the other kids like Suzie; nobody talks to Charlie, because Charlie is too shy to answer. One day the teacher wrote some very hard pluses and take aways on the board. She asked the children to find the answers. After a few minutes the teacher was called out of the room for a moment. Since Suzie seemed to have finished she asked Suzie to sit up front and be a room monitor. Suzie was so excited. This was her chance. When the teacher left Suzie began saying how smart she was and how much the teacher liked her. She started giving all of the other children a bad time and teasing them because they weren�t done yet. Only Charlie seemed not to be writing. As Suzie was commenting that Charlie was probably too dumb to even try to answer the questions, the teacher came back. Suzie didn�t hear her come in. She continued to put down her classmates. When the teacher had heard enough, she took Suzie to the time out bench and made her sit there for the rest of the morning. When she asked for the papers to be turned in, only Charlie had finished and gotten all of the questions correct. The teacher asked Charlie to come to the head of the class. There she gave him a big gold star to put on his desk. The teacher told Charlie that putting others down to make yourself feel more important like Suzie did was wrong. To be humble and do your best was the best way to be. The other kids were pretty impressed that Charlie got all the problems right and they all clapped for Charlie and his award. Charlie smiled a toothless grin and went back to his seat but not before saying thanks to all his new friends.
