Giving and Receiving Help

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By Patrice Pinette, Connections Facilitator

Walking along a path strewn with heart-shaped leaves, a boy carries a gift box tied with a bright pink ribbon. Another child on her way to school loses the ribbon that tied her ponytail when the wind carries it away out of her reach. “Sometimes bad things happen,” the narrator tells the reader, and then shows us that not only does the first child notice the ribbon flying away, but he also then unties the ribbon on his gift box and presents it to the girl who lost hers. 

In Jen Arena’s picture book, GIVE, illustrated by Rahele Jomepour Bell, it states, “Sometimes bad things happen,” is followed by, “Give what you have,” a colorful double-page spread illustrating the two children with the ribbon between them, in the act of giving and receiving it, with smiles.

GIVE was the second of four books chosen for teacher Julie Moulton’s beginner class for adult English as a Second Language learners at Keene Community Education through the Connections program. The theme Julie chose, based on discussions she’d had with her students, was “Giving and receiving help.” Sometimes each one of us is a giver; at other times we are the recipient of kindness, and sometimes we help each other. While the series of books demonstrated beautiful acts of reciprocity, GIVE shows us how receiving help inspires us to give help to others. 

There are so many kinds of gifts, and a multitude of ways to be of service. We explored examples of tangible gifts that we can hold in our hands, gifts that we can only feel in our heart, and still other gifts that are actions, which can be called “helping hands.” We shared personal stories about acts of service, of helping and being helped. 

Together, we made lists of physical gifts, such as a book, a sweater, a bouquet of flowers, a home-cooked meal, and we thought about transcendent, intangible gifts like friendship, time, music, and attention. We collected words, each on a small piece of paper, from each participant, drawn from their own experience. After giving words to the gathering basket, everyone was invited to take words out to craft something like a found poem, using words that were contributed by others and selected by chance. A template gave structure to the activity of writing—students arranged four of the chosen words in the first four lines, followed by the last line which was reserved for the individual’s imagination: The gift of my dreams is__________.

The short poems created through this writing activity of giving and receiving each other’s words, bringing them into relationship, and concluding with a final gift based on the heart’s longing are shared below.