A mother of a 9-year-old boy named Mark received a phone call from his teacher in the middle of the afternoon. Marks teacher said Mrs. Smith; your son did something that surprised me so much that I thought you should know about it immediately."
The mother was uneasy and nervous by such a beginning to a phone call. The teacher continued, I have been teaching a long time and nothing like this has happened. This morning I was teaching a lesson on creative writing. And as I always do, I tell the story of the ant and the grasshopper.
The ant works hard all summer and stores up plenty of food. But the grasshopper plays all summer and does no work. Then winter comes. The grasshopper begins to starve because he has no food. So he hops to the ant’s house and begins to beg. ’Please Mr. Ant, you have so much food please let me eat, too.’ Then I challenge them to write an ending to the story.
As in all the years past, most of the students said that the ant shared his food through the winter and both the ant and the grasshopper lived. A few children said, "No, Mr. Grasshopper. You should have worked in the summer and not played. Now,
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