When Ben* came into my care, he was only 6 years old. I was a single, 26 year-old foster mother, hoping to change his world. It didn’t take long to figure out that Ben’s parents had showered him with video games, candy, and just about anything that he wanted. (Not something I was used to seeing in foster children) Being new to parenting a 6 year-old, getting a video game system seemed like a fun thing to do. I bought a Sega Genesis, and the games were on! It was June, summer; what was wrong with playing a few video games? Right?
Ben was not thrilled that I was so excited to help him learn. He wasn’t thrilled that he was going to school. And he definitely did NOT like reading! He would have reading passages sent home. We would struggle with the words. We would argue over what appeared to be the simplest of passages. He didn’t want to sound the words out. I didn’t know how to help him. I was a high school math teacher, not a primary teacher. I had been trained to teach adolescents, not first graders! What was I supposed to do?
Parenting was new to me. I had been a foster mother to 2 year-old twins for 9 months, but never to a school-aged child. I could only think about Ben’s learning from my own experience. Reading came easily to me. I was reading before kindergarten. Ben was struggling to read at all. What do I do? I should point out that the internet was not quite the research tool that it is now. Therefore, I couldn’t run to it for advice. Shouldn’t that advice have been coming from his teacher? From his school?
It didn’t. From what I can recall, what I was told was to work on the reading at home. What a battle! Had that teacher ever tried to get a child, over whom she had little influence, to read something he didn’t want to read? In hindsight, I am sure that she had. But it sure didn’t feel like it at the time. Of course, I passed it off to his background, as I am sure that she did as well. We worked to what we thought was the best of our abilities to help Ben learn to read, hoping he would eventually love it.
Ben only stayed with me for 5 months. He returned to his mother after that. I know that he repeated first grade. I lost touch with him after about 2nd grade. Through the wonders of Facebook, I was able to locate him this past year. He posts about skateboarding and hanging with friends. I don’t see anything about school. It leads me to believe that he may not have finished school. How sad if this is true! His mother just didn’t have any idea where to begin with helping him with his reading. How did that affect him for the rest of his life?
We are very fortunate to live in a time when there are so many resources available to help children learn to read. Here is a list of some of those resources. I encourage you to add sites to it that you like. In fact, I would love to make this a list that teachers all over the world could share with the parents of their young readers. While we, as educators, realize that these resources are easily accessible. The parents of our students may not.
We, those parents of struggling readers, feel as if we are at a loss. I was an educated mom, and I got frustrated trying to read with Ben. What is the parent doing who doesn’t have any child development background, doesn’t have the education to support their long journey to literacy with their child, who gets frustrated to the point of giving up? That’s where we, as educators, must be able to provide resources for those parents. And, trust me, most of those parents are not going to ask for help. In my opinion, there are two reasons that they are not asking for help. I think that they are either too proud to ask for help or that they don’t even realize that there are ways to get help. They don’t know how many programs there are to help them.
We have to help our students like Ben. Because, you see, Ben is someone’s child!
*Name changed for privacy.
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