Write Lauren Write.

In my effort to force myself to write, I picked writing about my current work situation. I work as a long term sub at a local charter school. I teach/tutor K-1 grade in Literacy, such as teaching K their alphabet, and their numbers along with sight words. With first grade, I teach sight words too, but many times I tutor them in sounding or stretching their words out so they can improve their reading and writing.

It sounds all very dry, but in fact it's very rewarding. Well, rewarding, tedious, nerve wrecking (yes I did say wrecking on purpose), and intriguing all at the same time. It takes a lot of patience. Some times I have a lot of patience in the morning, but it runs out by about 3:15 when I know I am leaving at 3:30 pm. However there are little special moments that happen every day. I don't know how much I am teaching them in writing, but I do know that they are watching, and following my modeling every moment. They also surprise me with how much they know or are picking up from the world around them.

I seem to work mostly with special needs students. One example of the kids I encounter have some trouble with socialization with other peers and adults but are extremely bright. The other category of children seem to be developing very slowly in their learning, but they are socially well adjusted. Of course, I don't have an expertise in early ed, I am just making observations. I have only found one or two cases where the child is low-scoring academically, and also very difficult in the classroom because of abnormal behavior.

It's most fascinating to me to find that those children who behave the worst in the classroom, the same who I sometimes wonder if they are even hearing my voice telling them to "Please sit down" for the millionth time, or decide to lay down and have a screaming temper tantrum in the middle of a lesson - happen to be the children who test in ELA and Math the highest out of their class!

There was recently a test given to all of the students to see where they stood in their academic development. It covered subjects like Math, Science and Reading. I was one of the teachers giving the test. At one point I had to test a child that I knew was unable to be testing in a room with other children because of he was prone to having angry fits that weren't really prompted by much, except for maybe a teacher telling him to follow the rules. I knew that I would have to isolate this child to test him.

I will call this student Mico (name changed, obviously, to protect the child).

I took Mico to test him on his math skills. Being a novice to this kind of assessment, I assumed this child would have a lot of trouble figuring out the problems and also how to take a test. I especially thought he would have trouble with the way he was tested, which was through using an online computer program. I thought I was going to have to do a lot of hand holding. BOY was I wrong!

Instead, the boy patiently waited for me to finish the directions of each section, listened to me while I helped him read each question, and was able to figure out the process of testing using the computer mostly on his own. Not only that, he answered 9 out of 10 questions right without any prompt from me! When I read he got a 90 out of 100, I really couldn't believe it, because many times I feel like he's not even listening. Maybe he's not listening because he already knows the answer. Honestly, because Mico spent most of his time in class misbehaving or seemingly daydreaming, I thought he was a "low scoring" (as they call it) student academically.

But Mico wasn't alone in this phenomenon. There was another child who always needs special attention because of really difficult social behavior in the class. We can call him Chad. Chad often needs to be taken out of the class because of hitting, runnung around, shouting, and sometimes biting. I did not have the opportunity to test him, but I did see his scores on Math and ELA, and he also got 9 out of 10 questions right in Math, and Literacy. I have gotten the chance to sit with him on an occasion when he had one of his time outs. We read together, did math problems, and even drew picutres together of whole forests. In that moment I realized how bright Chad was, though at times he seems to daydream too, or go to a faraway imaginary place.


These two little boys have definitely changed the way I think about children who have certain behavioral problems. Maybe I was underestimating their ability, and I am wondering how many other cases there are like these two. It makes me want to know more about these two little guys, and also try to find other cases who are like them.

So fascinating!