The Little Princess

During my early days as a volunteer doubts about my ability to help scholars who were struggling academically entered my head.  All of that end when I was asked to help a fourth grade scholar named Norton improve his reading.  Norton sat in the far back left corner of the room all by himself.  His desk rather than facing the front of the room faced the window.  During previous visits to this classroom I tried to help Norton with his class work but he refused stating I'm not doing any work today.  His response caught me off guard a little and I wanted to say something appropriate to him but I just remained silent.  While in the car heading home I thought about Norton and wonder what Sister Ambrose would have said to me if I said to her I'm not doing any work today when she was my fourth grade teacher.  I'm sitting here laughing to myself as I'm thinking Sister Ambrose might say nothing but her silence would be accompanied by a loud smack.

On my next visit to the fourth grade the teacher asked to speak to    
me outside the room.  This made me a little nervous as I thought I    
might have done something wrong but she just said I need you to 
do something for me.  I said ok and she then stated Norton
approached her and said he wanted to learn how to read.  She     
proceeded to tell me that she had twenty six scholars in her room and didn't have the time to help Norton one on one so she ask me if  I could  help him read.  I said I'd be glad to do that and within two  minutes I'm in the hallway with Norton looking for a place to read. 

Norton is a big kid for his age.  He is the tallest student in the class 
and is a bit on the chunky side.  He also has this look on his face    
that says what are you looking at and if you didn't know him he could be intimidating.  I finally find a place to read and I ask Norton to show me the book he is reading.  So this big chunk of a boy pulls out his book and the title is The Little Princess.  I'm now 
suppressing my need to laugh and start talking about the front cover of the book.  On the cover is a picture of the Little Princess, a man      
in a military uniform and a gentleman wearing a turbin with a      
monkey on his shoulder.  I'm guessing when Norton selected this    
book he was more interested in the cover than the book title.  To 
put him at ease I said I'd read the first paragraph and then we'll   
alternate paragraphs.  He agreed and we started reading The Little 
Princess.

Here is what I learned after three weeks of reading with Norton.  First was that he was a year or maybe two years behind in his 
ability to read.  Next was that his ability to read improved 
because one day he said to me Mr. Schultz I don't want to read this 
book any more.  When I asked him why he said it was a girls book.  I took that comment as a sign of progress.  Last and most important 
was a conversation I had with his teacher.  She showed me the results of a reading test Norton took.  His score was twenty six and I said that is a pretty low score.  She said it was and then she told me all his previous scores were zero.  She then said that because I agreed to help him he will finally post a score showing he can read.  That made me feel pretty good and I knew that I could do some good at this school.