I had to pinch myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. A famous columnist, blogger, speaker, podcaster, playwright, consultant, teacher, multiple Moth StorySLAM winner, and the internationally bestselling author of nine books, including Storyworthy: Engage, Teach, Persuade, and Change Your Life through the Power of Storytelling, agreed to share a story with us. 

I was tempted to also ask productivity questions based on his latest book, Someday is Today, a must-read for goal setters. But I decided instead to let Matthew, who has been homeless, arrested and tried for a crime he didn’t commit, and who nearly lost his life during an armed robbery, concentrate on what he does best. Tell a story.

The Spoon of Power

I’m standing on the playground behind the school where I teach, staring at an enormous pile of autumn leaves. A small hand emerges from the pile, gripping a metal object between tiny fingers. Then a head emerges. A boy named Jaime. He shouts, “Look, Mr. Dicks! Look what I’ve found!”

I look.

“A spoon!” he shouts. “A spoon!”

And he’s right. It’s a spoon. A simple kitchen spoon, probably dropped from a lunch box yesterday or a decade ago. “But Jaime,” I say. “That’s not any ordinary spoon. It’s the Spoon of Power.”

  Jaime has known me long enough to know that once I have declared this to be the Spoon of Power, I must now have it for myself. And I know Jaime knows this because he’s already running. Sprinting. Fleeing, really, before I’ve even started to give chase.

But chase I do. For the next fourteen minutes, when my focus is supposed to be on the safety and security of more than a hundred fifth graders, the only thing I see is a small, redheaded boy and a metallic spoon in his hand. It’s a real chase, too. No joke. I’m really trying to catch the kid. 

We sprint across fields and forest, over hill and dale, through tubes and slides, and around picnic benches. I run like hell, fully intent on catching him, grabbing him, ripping that spoon from his sweaty, little hand, and making it mine.

After fourteen minutes, the bell rings, signaling the end of recess, and I can’t believe it.

Jaime still has the spoon.

I honestly, legitimately, exhaustively tried to catch that boy but failed.

He’s panting, barely able to breathe. My chest is heaving and I’m dripping with sweat.

But he still has the spoon.

That’s okay because Jaime is my student, and we still have three hours left in the school day. Also, Jaime is a ten-year-old boy, so he has the attention span of a mulberry bush. He’s thinking about the spoon now, but in a few minutes, his thoughts will drift to something else shiny or loud or caloric.

That is when I’ll strike.

A few minutes later, I’m teaching math. I’m writing problems on the board, and my students are copying them into notebooks. And I can’t believe Jaime’s audacity. He’s put the spoon on the corner of his desk, almost daring me to steal it. I’ve got one eye on the board and my equations and one eye on the spoon.

Jaime’s doing the same: One eye on the equations in his notebook and one eye on the spoon.

Now it’s time for reading. I’m sitting on a stool at the front of the classroom, reading a book aloud, and the spoon is still there on the edge of the desk, just daring me to take it. I’ve got one eye on the words on the page and one eye on the spoon. And Jaime has one eye on me and one eye on the spoon.

Honestly, I’ve never seen the boy so focused before. If I could get this kind of focus from him during math class, he might finally memorize his multiplication facts.

But that’s okay because we end the day with writing, and this is where I will, at last, get the spoon because Jaime is a writer, and he’s the kind of writer who gets lost in a story. I’ll just wait for Jaime’s head to come to rest on his arm and his hand to be moving furiously across the page, then I’ll strike.

I stand in the back of the classroom and watch.

I’m not wrong. Before long Jaime’s head sinks onto his arm. His hand moves the pencil across the page in long, languid flourishes. His mind has wandered into some fictional wasteland.

It’s time for me to strike.

I creep up the center aisle quietly, then circle around his small body and reach for the spoon.

It’s not there.

Where the hell did it go?

Jaime turns. Looks me in the eye. “Did you really think I was going to just leave it there for you to take?”

I can’t believe it. “Where’s the spoon?” I demand.

Jaime smiles.

“Where’s the spoon?” I ask the girl sitting beside him.

“What are you talking about?” she asks, hiding a grin. 

“Where’s the spoon?” I ask the boy on the other side.

“What spoon?” he says. He’s smiling, too. They’re all smiling. They are conspiring against me. I sound paranoid, but I’m not. These are ten-year-old children.

They’re monsters.

I threaten mountains of homework if the spoon is not produced immediately. “You’ll never see recess again!” I shout. “I’m serious!”

Then the bell rings. The children cheer. Jaime leaps from his seat and runs to his locker to gather his things. Then he pivots. Moves to the library. Reaches out and pulls forward the box of books marked S. Reaches inside and takes out the Spoon of Power.

“I filed it under S for spoon!” he shouts, and he’s out the door before I can say a word.

I can’t believe it. The spoon is gone. Jaime managed to keep it from me all day. I’ll never see the damn thing again.

•••

The next day, Jaime enters the classroom with the Spoon of Power hanging from his neck on a chain.

“How did you...?”

“My dad drilled the hole,” Jaime says. “And my mom gave me the chain.”

Now I know that I’ve lost. As perfectly willing as I was to rip that spoon from his tiny fingers, even I can’t tear it off his neck by the chain. And Jaime knows it. He spends the day walking around the room flaunting the spoon, letting it swing back and forth from his neck.

“The Spoon of Power, baby!” he says again and again. “It’s mine! All mine!”

It makes me crazy. I hate him.

Now it’s Thursday. Time for our weekly math test, which means it’s also time for Makenzie to lose her mind because someday, theoretically, Makenzie might make a mistake on a math test — score something less than a perfect 100 percent — and that will be the end of the world for her. So I’m standing beside her, bolstering her spirits, trying to assure her that mistakes are normal and expected and even valuable.

“Everyone makes mistakes. Even me,” I say.

As always, my words do very little. She continues to spiral. But then Jaime is standing beside me. He removes the Spoon of Power from his neck and drops it over Makenzie’s head and onto her neck. “Here,” he says. “Maybe this will help.”

It does. Makenzie is the calmest, most confident she has ever been while taking a math test.

I can’t believe it. It really is a Spoon of Power.

A week later, David’s grandmother passes away. When David returns to school, Jaime is waiting by the door for him. As David enters the classroom, Jaime drops the spoon around his neck. “I think you could use this today.”

Jaime is right.

For the rest of the school year, every time a student is in need of help, Jaime is standing by with the spoon. When a kid forgets their homework and has to face the music, they approach my desk wearing the Spoon of Power around their neck. Whenever a student is sent to the principal’s office for poor behavior, they take that long walk while wearing a spoon. Whenever a classmate is bullied on the bus ride to school, they ride home that day wearing the spoon.

Every time, without exception, it makes the child feel better. Somehow, in some way, that spoon makes children feel happy and safe and hopeful. On the last day of school, I gather my students for a final meeting before we say goodbye and head off to summer vacation. I say some things to the kids about working hard, being kind, and visiting me often, then I invite the kids to speak. I teach fifth grade — the last grade in elementary school — so these kids are going to be divided in the fall, off to different schools, so this will be our last time together. “Say anything you’d like,” I tell them. “This is your last chance.”

Jaime rises. He walks over to me. Takes a deep breath. Then he removes the Spoon of Power from his neck, stares at it in his hands for a moment, and attempts to hand it to me. Holds it out for me to take.

“No,” I say, pushing it away. “Listen, Jaime. Back in October, I legitimately tried to get that spoon from you, and had I caught you, it would be mine today. But somehow you managed to hold on to it, and you turned it into something magical. Something amazing. That’s your spoon now. Not mine.”

“No,” Jaime says. Then he smiles. “You don’t understand. The power of the spoon only works in your classroom. You need to take the spoon and use it next year when kids need help. You have to carry it now. You have to give away the magic.” Then Jaime turns. Walks across the circle. Grabs hold of his chair and drags it over and alongside me. Then he steps up onto it and drops the chain around my neck.

For the first time in my life, I am wearing the Spoon of Power.

•••

The 2020–21 school year, the year of Covid, was the most difficult in my twenty-five years of teaching. Pandemic protocols. Frightened children. Terrified parents. Masks and social distancing. A nervous teacher worried about his students, his wife — a kindergarten teacher — and his own children. It was a hard year. Students got sick. Parents got sick. My wife got sick.

I got sick.

Grandparents died.

But it was also the best year of my teaching career. It was my chance to make an enormous difference in the lives of children and their families.

Maybe the biggest difference I will ever make. It was a year spent outdoors as often as possible, nestled under the trees in front of our school, reading and writing and playing games. Making social and emotional well-being the most important part of every day.

Part of that success came because I still had the Spoon of Power to help me, and I used that spoon during that pandemic year more than ever before.

Almost every day, one or more of my students wore that spoon around their necks, and it seemed to work even better than before. I even had a colleague wear the spoon one day when things had become especially challenging for her.

I felt like the luckiest teacher in America that year because I was the only teacher in our country with a spoon that had the power to make a child’s day better simply by telling them the story of the spoon and Jaime and the magic, then dropping it around their necks.

A spoon, found at the bottom of a leaf pile almost two decades ago, has been my most valuable teaching tool, all thanks to a redheaded boy who saw the power in something as simple as a kitchen spoon and managed to keep it from the prying grasp of his crazy teacher. 

Thank you, Matthew Dicks, for a story that we’re sure to remember. For those wanting more, check out my earlier column about his life-changing “Homework for Life,” bit.ly/3VlSzmm, and his website, www.matthewdicks.com, where you can subscribe to his free newsletter, purchase his books, find a link to his entertaining You-tubes, and more.