Corrective reading

Teaching someone how to read for the first time is the most exciting, boring thing that I have ever done.

You start with the very basics: the letter A makes the sound, and then you give the short a sound as though that is the only sound that the letter makes, you know that although 15 or 16 that these students are not ready yet for multiple vowel sounds. It is fascinating also because I so rarely consider the remarkable ability to know language, its complexity and shear volume of words. The repetition is remarkable and infuriating, and although you help the students, a lot of it is waiting for them, encouraging them to fail for hours until finally they get it.

The program is very scripted: the first third of the time is all speech, I say something and they repeat it. The second third of the period is basic reading: I put a letter on the board and ask for the sound. The third part is written.

To this I added time for conversation, time to learn how to read a clock, and count money.

I had 3 students
J-My rock. First day I walked into the classroom he was there, looking down at the table. He is a kid who is so shy that it scares you; what should you say to him, is he doing ok. So we start a conversation, and by that I mean I talked to him and he would nod or say yes or no. It took me about ten minutes of talking before I got more than a one word answer from him. He is a large kid with big powerful shoulders and a big powerful stomach, he looks just like a lineman and wants to be one. He has a little fro and a whiskery goatee. He has a stutter. He was born in the Robert Taylor homes, and left when they were demolished. He now lives by a dangerous stop on the green line. He watches the Chicago bears all the time, and cannot remember a single name of a bear: but he knows all their numbers.
He was never late and always came to school. He had a great attitude about work, and even though he was quiet, later he would come to my aid (I helped out in his biology class) and shake his heads and say "you shouldn't do that" in a quiet voice. Didn't sound like much, but if a student kept misbehaving he would repeat himself, and students were able to figure out that J although shy was not a punk. He had a great smile that would flash occasionally and a gigantic, heaving laugh.
An A grade is anything greater than 60 percent, to pass he must have over 25 percent in a class.

Working with him has been the biggest pleasure of my teaching career, and the thing that I am the most proud of.

B- tall and skinny, with a lot of scars on his arms and gigantic eyes. Also dead silent in class but more sociable and problematic with other students. He also spoke under his breath, and could not raise his voice without becoming annoyed. Everything you say to him takes at least five seconds to be processed. He cannot write or read, but passed his Freshman year. And elementary school for that matter. He always had a completely vacant look on his face, although he would smile from time to time. He would also occasionally have very violent spasms of anger that could not be predicted. You could explain things to him and he would get them (he was much quicker inside of his mind than J) but he would completely forget them within a half hour. His homework was non-existent, his overall class grades were in the single digits, and he often skipped class or school. He was known to be a part of a gang, and spent some time in the hospital after he got hit in the head with a lock.
The suspicion is that his learning disability is the result of being a crack baby, and that he suffered significant natal brain injuries. Meetings with his mother, regrettably, seem to support this theory. She is always half screaming with anger at the teachers and B, but also has a lot of guilt issues and will change her mind and say it is not our fault, crying, and then reverse herself and lash out again. B's elder brother is a known drug king-pin.
Bobby is alternatively cooperative or hesitant with me, and makes slow progress.

G-half Honduran and half Mexican, G was tall, skinny and very handsome as the girls kept telling me. ESL. He is much quicker mentally, but also has bizarre associations. Once I showed him the letter J and he was convinced that it made a sound like shhh. I corrected him and he got it, but occasionally another, equally random sound would come out of his mouth when he the same letter, and he had a lot of other strange connections. In class he was very popular, and used his good looks to get smart girls to carry him through the class.

Working with these students in infuriating to me: how they got to me, a non-trained person filling the role of a specialist, and they cannot read. Reading should be a fundamental human right. I believe that people have the right to literacy in American society. There was nothing making it impossible for these students to read, and they would eventually. But it is amazing to me that the most basic opportunities in our society are denied to the rural and urban poor by criminal neglect. CPS had to cut their reading specialist positions, and here I am dealing with illiterate 16 year olds who have trouble counting money, are below a 3rd grade level in most classes, who cannot spell where they live...

Sometimes I lay awake all night, hating.