How Does This Happen?

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?