Don't Tell Others

On my third to last time going to the Reading Clinic my student unfortunately was not there so I was reassigned to help out a child that seemed a little older.  I had not met him so I asked him his name and what grade he was in, he told me that he is a 3rd grader but he should be a 4th and that he was held back a year because of his poor reading skills.  I was astonished and think there is no way this could be possible, I mean being held back just because of your reading?  Then we started reading and once he began, I began to understand why he was held back.  He was struggling with words like 'because' and every word  sounded like one giant word that was put together.  I went and looked at his daily log from the previous times and noticed that the Clinician had said he was doing just fine, one of her comments said "Very good at comprehending and understanding what he is reading."  So I wanted to see if this was true so after he finished a couple of pages I asked him "What were those pages about?"  He replied "I don't know, that's what nobody understands!"  I was shocked to see this child being basically ignored by the Clinicians, I felt pity for him.

Every story has a second end or another person that doesn't see things the way you do, I was beginning to see and realize how poorly some of the teachers began to see the children.  A lot of the teachers that were there were some of the teachers that have been teaching them all year long.  One day I wasn't assigned a student because they needed me to help move boxes of books into the Gymnasium to read.  As I was doing this the lady blatantly started talking about how she hates children and thinks they are germ infested brats.  I kindly asked her, "If you don't like kids, why did you get into the education system?" and she had explained that she doesn't like elementary school children but wanted to work with Junior High School or High school kids.  Another lady talked about how she doesn't like when they misbehave and don't listen, I thought to myself 'They are about 8-9 years old, they are going to misbehave!  It's what they do!  But I know if I would have said that I would have been kicked out.

The second to last Reading Clinic came and all of the children were sad to leave but I thought it was a huge accomplishment for them.  One of the clinicians spilled the beans and told one of their students that we were having a good bye party and a certificate ceremony.  After they heard about this, it was so hard to keep them under control because they would talk to each other when they would go and look at books.  I knew that their attention for reading that had been built up over the course of two months, had disappeared.

The school where the Reading Clinic took place