check_other (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} check_other) wrote,@ 2008-03-28 13:50:00 |
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Story #4: Well, I'M here.
*Self-editor's comments: Yes, it's been two years. It's hard for me to believe. I've had more story ideas, but mostly I've been a bit stagnant in certain aspects of my growth. I've allowed time for my social life and networks to flourish... such that now it's time to see if I can combine a life of reflection, introspection with an outer life of social action. It's the next step. And I'm taking it, like the careful baby learning to climb the stairs I was 23 some years ago. I won't fall back, but I'll move REAL slow*
October 2006: I'm sitting in literacy class with 4 disheartened 3rd graders, too conscious of the fact that they do not read as well as their classmates, but unwilling to admit it, unmotivated to learn, or at least unmotivated to do the hard work that learning requires of them.
The most fluent reader of the group, an accomplished memorizer of words who couldn't sound one out for the life of him, makes a face in the corner, formulating an excuse, an escape, if subconscious, to avoid reading with me today: "I can't read!" he finally spews when probed. So indicative of the fact that it's my first year, first month really, of teaching here and I've yet to have the right words to respond to such children's cries, I retort: "What?! Who told you that?" It was meant to be a rhetorical question.
Yet it got a reply: "My dad."
"But he's in jail."
...
"Well, then he's not here next to you seeing you read like I am."
I make no claims that what I said was right or wrong. It's just a short story for which you can draw your own conclusions.
*Self-editor's comments: Yes, it's been two years. It's hard for me to believe. I've had more story ideas, but mostly I've been a bit stagnant in certain aspects of my growth. I've allowed time for my social life and networks to flourish... such that now it's time to see if I can combine a life of reflection, introspection with an outer life of social action. It's the next step. And I'm taking it, like the careful baby learning to climb the stairs I was 23 some years ago. I won't fall back, but I'll move REAL slow*
October 2006: I'm sitting in literacy class with 4 disheartened 3rd graders, too conscious of the fact that they do not read as well as their classmates, but unwilling to admit it, unmotivated to learn, or at least unmotivated to do the hard work that learning requires of them.
The most fluent reader of the group, an accomplished memorizer of words who couldn't sound one out for the life of him, makes a face in the corner, formulating an excuse, an escape, if subconscious, to avoid reading with me today: "I can't read!" he finally spews when probed. So indicative of the fact that it's my first year, first month really, of teaching here and I've yet to have the right words to respond to such children's cries, I retort: "What?! Who told you that?" It was meant to be a rhetorical question.
Yet it got a reply: "My dad."
"But he's in jail."
...
"Well, then he's not here next to you seeing you read like I am."
I make no claims that what I said was right or wrong. It's just a short story for which you can draw your own conclusions.
