Mark Eklund was in the first third grade class I taught at Saint Mary's School in Morris, Minn. He was neat in appearance, but had that happy-to-be-alive attitude that made even his occasional mischievousness   delightful. Mark liked talking. I had to remind him again and again that talking without permission was not acceptable. What impressed me so much, though, was his sincere response every time I had to correct him for misbehaving: "Thank you for correcting me, sister!" One day in class, I asked pupils to list the names of the other students on two sheets of paper, leaving a space between each name. Then I told them to think of the nicest thing they could say about each of their classmates and write it down. That Saturday, I wrote down the name of each student on a separate sheet of paper, and I listed what everyone else had said about that student. On Monday I gave each student his or her list. Before long, the entire class was smiling.     Several years later, after I returned from vacation, my father met me at the airport.      "Mark was killed in the war," he said." The funeral is tomorrow, and his parents would like it if you could attend."     I had never seen a serviceman in a military coffin   before. As I stood there, Mark's father said, "We want to show you something. They found this on Mark when he was killed." He took a wallet out of his pocket.      Opening the billfold  , he carefully removed two worn pieces of notebook paper that had obviously been taped, folded and refolded many times. I knew without looking that the papers were the ones on which I had listed all the good things each of Mark's classmates had said about him.     "Thank you so much for doing that," Mark's mother said. "As you can see, Mark treasured it."     That's when I finally sat down and cried. I cried for Mark and for all his friends who would never see him again. What did the author ask the students to write on the paper?
Mistakes each student had made. Things each student liked doing. The habits of each student. The strong point of each student