Little Things

I'm a pathetic excuse for a blogger. To my credit, it's been a crazy couple of weeks around here. Husband's grandfather had surgery a couple of weeks ago, so keeping up with all of that plus work had us running all over town. Pawpaw's surgery went great. Watching Mawmaw take care of him when he first got to his room was so sweetly adorable. One of those "we'll be like that when we get older, right?" moments. Yesterday though Pawpaw mowed his yard, when he has yet to be cleared to drive ANYTHING, much less have that much physical exertion. Mother-in-Law is beyond livid with him. It's tough raising parents.

Anyway, I had a moment at work yesterday that I just had to share. One of my students is extremely...stubborn. She has guessed at words for so long, she doesn't really have the skills to USE the rules we give her to help decode words. She has also said on more than one occasion to both her other tutor and me that she doesn't care if she learns to read, she doesn't want to be here, blah, blah, blah. Last week she threw herself a nice little fit for me. She was trying to read a story and getting completely frustrated at not being able to figure out the words. That shut her down for most of the rest of the lesson. Not fun. Yesterday we had to start off again with reading stories. She gets about half way through the first one (and did a great job of figuring out words--only one really threw her because, well, how often do YOU use the word "utmost" in everyday conversations?) and asks if her grandmother could come in and hear her read. I say absolutely, but was a little nervous since she hadn't read the whole thing through yet and she has a history of getting frustrated easily. She stumbled over a few words, but only needed a couple of prompts ("What will that c say?" or "What's that vowel sound again?"). I catch her grandmother wipe her eye and then again and realize she's started crying. When my student is done, her grandmother hugs her and says "Thank you for sharing that with me." So beautiful. When grandmother leaves my student says "She was crying" and kind of giggles. I told her that was because of what an amazing job she did, sounding out words, dividing when she needed to, and not getting upset when she didn't know a word automatically. Grandmother may need to come in more often! One of those little things that remind me why I love what I'm doing and reinforces what my ultimate goal is.