I Can't Read
This is a phrase I hear frequently in the classrooms I've observed. It is usually mumbled and their ears start to turn bright red, the blush working their way across their face as their classmates stare.
My first experience in a classroom was an 8th grade Read 180 classroom. For those of you that aren't aware of what Read 180 is, it is a program designed to help kids get closer to their grade level of reading through small groups and a computer program. The class can consist of general education students or special education students, though usually it is the latter.
In this class of about 12 there was a student, let's call him Andy, that didn't like me very much. He was a social kid with lots of friends and had plenty of girls to flirt with. When ever he would get on the computer to do the module for the day he would constantly distract his partner. I would inevitably kneel down between the two and look at Andy.
"Can you work on the assignment for the day? You haven't even read the passage."
His ears turned red and it rushed across the back of his neck. "I can't read."
Now if he truly couldn't read he would have been placed in a lower level Intervention class, so I knew that that statement wasn't quite true.
I had no idea what to tell him. I was never sure what to tell him actually, and I'm still formulating a proper response.
Further through the semester he and I got into our share of battles. He, at one point, shouted at me in front of the whole class while the teacher was out of the classroom.
He had yelled, "You're not my teacher!"
We had to have a talk, me, Andy, and the Read 180 teacher. He mumbled an apology. The teacher looked him straight in the face and said, "Don't treat her like you treated me the first few weeks."
I had two more weeks left in the classroom and Andy and I had been getting along surprisingly well. He had finally warmed towards me a little bit. He did what I asked during our small groups most of the time, grudgingly I might add.On my last day we were joking around with a few of the other boys going over literary elements for their poems. I told them that knowing these things are important.
Andy said something that I'll never forget. "Why? It's not like we are going to finish high school anyways."
We, as teachers, all are taught that education is the pinnacle of society and at the age of 14, they already decided that their future had nothing to do with school. Some of the boys agreed with Andy's statement, others didn't.
I wish I'd had the courage to stow the smile and tell them, "Reading is a learned skill. It is not something that is supposed to occur naturally in your brain. Reading is like any other learned skill, you have to practice. If you chose to goof off and not try and say you hate reading, you will continue to hate it and think yourself more stupid for not knowing.
"You are not stupid. You're just a rookie. If you never practice, you'll never be varsity."
Not saying anything is one of my biggest regrets. My not speaking up probably confirmed exactly what he thought about himself, and that's something that I can never fix.
This was moving. Thank you for sharing. I wouldn't know how to respond to him either if I was in your shoes. I remember a first grader telling me last semester that he was dumb cause he couldn't read. He had already resigned himself to the bad-kid-who-can't-read. How do we help those students that have already given up? I hope to learn how to answer this question in my time at CSU.
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