Pathfinders has given me the opportunity to meet some very special young people. One of my students pulled at my heartstrings just a little harder one day, this is just a small bonding moment we shared one afternoon in October.
It was Monday; she was feeling tired, worn out, some may say even a little cranky. She was definitely not in the mood to work after a long day at school. “Do we really have to do work today?” she said reluctantly, “When do we get to play a game?”. As we slowly walked down the hall she started to tell me about her fun weekend and how sad she was that it was over. She had spent the weekend fishing and riding on a boat with her grandparents, how could I top that?
She started to smile a bit during the warm-up but when the reading portion of our session came the smile quickly faded. I had picked a few books for us before the session and when I pulled them out, a glimpse of a smile showed just at the corners of her mouth. There was a particular book, “Moose’s Loose Tooth,” that was the one! The smile slowly grew. Now, it was obvious from the beginning of our partnership that this young lady was not a fan of reading, but we had to get through it together, and I assured her I would be there every step of the way. Well the time came, the book was picked and it was time to start reading. I set the timer for five minutes, after a big sigh, the writing finger came up and we were off. We started reading…slowly but surely the smile grew, “this story is funny,” she said! She was actually enjoying reading it. Then we saw it, a question mark… “but she doesn’t like reading, she won’t read the punctuation.” Much to my surprise there was a subtle higher note hit at the end of the question, she DID it, she was reading the punctuation. As we continued, the smile got bigger, and suddenly much to our surprise the five minutes were up, the timer beeped. She looked at me with a disappointed look and said, “Wait, can we finish this page?” “Of course we can,” I said with a sigh of relief. We finished the page and moved on with our session. A few minutes later, she asked, “When are we going to read again?” I was shocked. We finished the rest of our work and got back to reading. The little girl who came in that warm Monday afternoon, tired, cranky, and worn out, left smiling and laughing and all it took was “Moose’s Loose Tooth.”
Leave a Reply