One afternoon after a very hard day of lessons, Miss Waskiel, could sense the tension in the classroom.  To break the ice and Destress everyone she had everyone sit in a circle on the floor.  Everyone was given a piece of sheet paper and a marker.  The instruction was to write their own name on the top of the paper and then pass it to the person on their right.  Each student wrote something nice about the each other and eventually would get back to the beginning student.  Even Miss Waskiel took a turn.  Everyone left that class feeling confident in themselves and as if they were on top of the world

Years passed and the students got older.  Most of them always came back to visit their favorite teacher.  They eventually graduated and Miss Waskiel was nominated teacher of the year.  Some went off to college, some went into the work field and other went into the military.

One afternoon, Miss Waskiel got a very distressing phone call.  One of her students from the class had passed away over seas (he was in the army).  She prepared her self to go to the funeral thinking of him as he was when she had him as a little guy.  Wishing he was still there as she remembered him.  

The Funeral was as sad as any funeral is especially when you were a part of someones life.  She attended the reception afterwards and was greeted warmly by the mother of the boy.  She said, "Miss Waskiel, you have no idea how much you touched my sons life.  You were his favorite teacher.  The army has sent home his private items and tucked away was this folded note.  I thought it was some letter he'd written, but never had time to mail, but in fact it was that paper with all the nice things his friends wrote about him back in your class.  He's kept it all these years!"

Tears instantly came to her eyes and instantly the classmates around her reached into their pocket books / wallets and pulled out their paper as well!  

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Now that wasn't exactly how the story went, but it is how i remembered it.  My 5th grade teacher read us that story and then had us do the same activity.  I still to this day have my piece of paper tucked away nice and safe.  I hope to do this activity some day with my own classroom.