I found out recently that one of my favorite “troubled”
students can’t read. He is almost 15
years old and he can’t read. How does that happen? How has he gone 15 years of
his life without anyone caring enough to teach this child to read?
On the first day of school he came running in, literally,
and punched the cement wall. My first thought was, please tell me he’s in the
wrong class. He was loud, obnoxious, and a little crazy. The next day he punched
the lockers and the wall until his knuckles were bleeding and he was very proud
of this.
Timmy and I have grown close over the past 5 weeks. He comes
to see me in the mornings and sometimes at the end of the day. He tells me how
cool I am and how he will miss me if his family moves again.
On the first day of my computer apps class I like to have
each student take a typing speed test online. Timmy typed 9 words per minute.
He seemed a little embarrassed but I assured him it was fine and he would get
better with practice.
The rest of the class has been working on typing keyboarding
lessons from a textbook, but Timmy wouldn’t agree to that. So, I made some
modifications for his lessons and he types on a website designed to improve
your typing speed. When he got to 15 words per minute he was so excited and I
hyped him up telling him how awesome he did. Then one day he asked if I had any
candy. When I scrounged up a peppermint he said, so if I get 20 wpm can I have
it? I agreed and 30 minutes later Timmy said he got 20 wpm but he forgot to
show it to me and said I should just take his word for it. I explained to him
that I didn’t know him well enough to take his word for it and said “I need to
see it to believe it”. This has become a common phrase in our conversations.
Before the end of class Timmy earned that peppermint.
Day after day I bribe Timmy with food, candy, and gum and
day after day his typing improves. This week he typed 40 wpm. In just one hour
a day, for a month, he went from 9 wpm to 40 wpm. He was so proud that he
printed the certificate and asked me to sign it. I almost cried.
A couple days ago I told him Mrs. Roark and I talked about
him. He said, “oh no, did she say mean things? I bet she did. She never liked
me.” I said no, she told me that you were a really sweet kid and I agreed. Then
he looked at me and said, well tell her I said hi.
Timmy wears only 2 or 3 different shirts and the same ripped
jeans daily. Today he had on a shirt I hadn’t seen before. It had words written
across it that said something about sarcasm. I asked him what it said several
times before he said, Ms. Back, you know I can’t read. He laughs about
everything and even in this statement
he was laughing.
All I could think was, how does this happen?
