Number of words – 255

Hayes addressed her audience of eighty-four new students: “Before you get your teachers, I have to give you a present. And as soon as i give it to you, you have to put it in your pocket.”

She pulled an invisible object out of her jacket and put it in the hand of each child, leaning down to reach the smaller ones like Jaquan. “This present is my trust,” she said.

“If you lose it, you cannot go out to the store and get another one. You are going to have to earn it back, I am asking you not to lose it for the next eighty or ninety years of your life.

“Do you want to keep my trust?” Several children nodded. Some said yes.

“How do you think you can lose my trust?”

There were several suggestions: fighting, lying, not turning in homework. She agreed that all of those were ways they could lose her trust.

“I have my back to several people right now,” she said. “Another way you could lose my trust is to talk behind my back.”

Someone mentioned disrespect. Hayes’s eyes widened. “Disrespecting me? Uh! Let me tell you right now. Don’t even try. Because it’s going to make you look very bad, and you are going to lose my trust.

“There are ways to earn back my trust, but it is very hard,” she said. “It is a lot easier just to keep it for eighty or ninety years.”

Excerpted from Work Hard, Be Nice by Jay Mathews