Story From The Field

A side story from my field experience that I would like to share with you all is about a student who is in grade two that I had the opportunity to read with. I learned from my cooperating teacher that at the beginning of the school year this particular student told the teacher that he did not want to take home his take-home reading package because no one at home wanted to help him read or listen to him read the stories. He told the teacher that the package would probably just get lost at home. My cooperating teacher has me take this student to the library and go through 2-3 books with this student during my time at the school each week. I then fill out his reading log and sign it so that he too can collect reading points like his peers.

When I heard about this it made me really sad. It made me sad because these books maybe take 5-10 minutes to read and the fact that this student’s parents aren’t able to dedicate any time towards helping him learn how to read truly saddens me. It saddens me even more because after reading with this student I know how much he likes to read. He would read all day if he could, but he needs someone to help him with words he doesn’t understand, and he needs someone to sit and spend time with him. He absolutely loved the time we spent reading in the library one-on-one and for a student like himself who has difficulty listening and paying attention in class, he sure listened and engaged well with the reading that we did. He wanted to learn new words and he wanted to figure them out. When we would come across a word that he didn’t know, I would hold my fingers over different letters to help him sound out the word. After doing this a few times he would stop asking for help with a word and just move my fingers over the letters as he sounded them out. This was a very powerful experience for me because it felt like I was actually making a difference in this particular student’s life.