Hear My Cry

All teachers, have defining moments in their careers, for the fortunate those moments strengthen both our skills and commitment to teaching.  I suppose we could consider those the teachable moment for educators.  Like so many others, one of the defining moments in my career came in the form of a specific student.  His name was not James, but the strength of that name reminds me of him.  The clarity of my memories of him after all of these years speaks to the impact he had on me and my teaching.  I was forewarned of his arrival by the principal of the school where I worked.  An amazing administrator, she wanted James to feel secure without any unnecessary disruption to my classroom.  James, she warned, had been in a self-contained classroom with students whose needs were profound.  His mother had recently died and he was moving to our neighborhood to live with his father.  His former teachers warned us of unusual noises and behaviors that he may have picked up from the other students in his classroom.  Academically he was profoundly behind other fifth grade students, with a deficit that placed him on a kindergarten level.  James would not be in my classroom for more than 2 weeks, maybe a month at most, while placement in an appropriate setting was located.

Of course, in education time is quite relative and 2 weeks could be as little as 2 days or as much as 2 months.  In this case it was the latter, for which I will be eternally grateful.  It turns out James was not anything like my expectations.  First, he was tall.  Taller than I am (or in this case was).  He was soft spoken, compliant and made no unusual noises nor did he behave in any way that we had been led to expect.    And polite, even by Texas standards. 

At that time I worked with a group of amazing educators, in particular those in our special education department.   James spent the majority of his day in special education, which happened to be located right next to my room.  He would return to class for science and social studies, specials and end of day procedures.  Due to scheduling conflicts James generally returned to class during our literature circle time each day.  He always had a project to work on, assembling something or practicing writing his letters.  He would go directly to his desk and work while the students and me either read or discussed our current novel.

We happened to be reading Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, when James first arrived.  My first inkling of what was to come happened when we were reading how one of the main characters, Little Man, was so insulted by what was written in the front of his text book that he refused to accept the book.  The students were discussing why he was so angry, without much luck.  From across the room came an answer, “Well if they got the books after the white school said the books were damaged or in bad shape, then they must think the kids at the black school are damaged or in bad shape.”

That clear and succinct insight came from James, not at all what I was expecting from him, much to my continued chagrin.  That led to the most amazing changes in the classroom.  Each day James moved a little bit closer to the literature circle and after a couple of days the students asked if we could read aloud while James was in the room so he could hear the story.  Before long James was part of our literature circle, despite his inability to read he added quite a lot to our discussions.

James could not read, and in all honesty his writing was limited mostly to his name and copying sentences.  Yet that young man could think.  James personified the reality that thinking, learning and reading are not the same, despite the fact that our educational system often acts as if they are.  James could think, could learn but most definitely could not read.  The last time I spoke with him he was in his early twenties and could not read, but was employed and had his own apartment. 

When I plan, or write curriculum I always approach it with James in mind.  I work to ensure that I do not confuse learning or thinking with reading.  While learning to read is a tremendous part of elementary school, learning to think or learning in general is why we teach reading.  It is not the end; it is one of the means.