Wonder R. J. Palacio

RULES. SCHOOLWORK. HOMEWORK.
"What else?" he said as he wrote, not even turning around. "Just call things out!" He 
wrote everything everyone called out.
FAMILY. PARENTS. PETS.
One girl called out: "The environment!"
THE ENVIRONMENT. 
he wrote on the chalkboard, and added:
OUR WORLD!
"Sharks, because they eat dead things in the ocean!" said one of the boys, a kid named 
Reid, and Mr. Browne wrote down

---

SHARKS.
"Bees!" "Seatbelts!" "Recycling!" "Friends!"
"Okay," said Mr. Browne, writing all those things down. He turned around when he 
finished writing to face us again. "But no one's named the most important thing of all."
We all looked at him, out of ideas. "God?" said one kid, and I could tell that even 
though Mr. Browne wrote "God" down, that wasn't the answer he was looking for. 
Without saying anything else, he wrote down:
WHO WE ARE!
"Who we are," he said, underlining each word as he said it. "Who we are! Us! Right? 
What kind of people are we? What kind of person are you? Isn't that the most important 
thing of all? Isn't that the kind of question we should be asking ourselves all the time? 
"What kind of person am I?
"Did anyone happen to notice the plaque next to the door of this school? Anyone read 
what it says? Anyone?"
He looked around but no one knew the answer.
"It says: 'Know Thyself,' " he said, smiling and nodding. "And learning who you are is 
what you're here to do."
"I thought we were here to learn English," Jack cracked, which made everyone laugh. 
"Oh yeah, and that, too!" Mr. Browne answered, which I thought was very cool of him. 
He turned around and wrote in big huge block letters that spread all the way across the
chalkboard:
MR. BROWNE'S SEPTEMBER PRECEPT: