Yesterday after class, when the bell rang and we all got up to leave, Ms. Clara called me out in front of everyone. “Will you stay for a minute, Melissa. I want to talk to you.” I could only think, “What have I done, now?” because an after-class talking-to did not usually go well for me.
“I have good news for you: We found you a reading coach. He’ll be coming in next Monday and will pull you out to read with him in the morning, after PE. Isn’t that great?
“I guess,” was all I had to say. I had one, last year in third grade, and it wasn’t such a good thing. “We’ll see about that,” was what I wanted to say. I didn’t have high hopes.
“Does that mean I don’t have to go to my speech teacher, anymore?” I hated that more than anything. Practicing phonics is so boring and I don’t get it. I don’t care if I never get good at it.
“We’ll see, but maybe not right away. You’re going to see Mr. Fred once a week. I haven’t met him, but your principal tells me he is a neat guy, and hopes the two of you can get along, and you can become a better reader.”
Monday morning, I saw him at the tutoring table in the hallway as I came up the stairs from PE. I ignored making eye contact. “Let ’im come get me,” was my silent response. When he did, I tried to look surprised, but what I really wanted to say was, “Why are you here? You can’t possibly help me, don’t even try.”
In the hallway, I flipped my hair back and gave him my best don’t talk to me look to say, “OK, what have you got?” He had nothing, as I suspected. Ms. Clara had given him some of those stupid “reading skills” pamphlets. I read the stories, and answered the questions, again. He didn’t say anything but, “Very good.” I knew it wasn’t, or why else was he here?
For the next two weeks, that’s all we did for forty-five minutes. All he did was sit there thinking about something—I don’t know what. This was going to go nowhere fast, but at least it got me out of class for a while. Then in the third week, I had had enough. “Can you not test me today? I just want to read.” Take that Mr. Reader. Where’s the reading help you promised me?
That stopped him in his tracks. Then he started talking. Oh god, here it comes. I flipped my hair back, expected nothing.
“What do you like to read?”
I don’t like to read.
“Do you read at home?”
No.
“Not at all?”
Yea, never, was all he was going to get out of me. His whole expression changed, like he just lost at Bingo or something. We talked some more, then he did some more “testing.”
Next week, things started to change.
When I sat down he blurted out, “We’re not going to read today. We’re going to write.”
Okay, whatever, was all I could come up with.
Then he read me some fairy-tale-like thing. It sounded interesting, not your normal princess meets ogre story. It went through several scenes—castles, forests, swamps—but the main character didn’t know what to do when a problem came up, because she didn’t know who she was.
She kept on going until she found herself in an open field. There was nothing to see except tall grass for miles and miles. There was a sign in front of her that had words on it that she couldn’t quite make out. She could almost read some of them, but the letters seemed jumbled up and crazy. She couldn’t tell what they said.
Then he stopped. “OK, now, think about what you need to get across that field. What part of you, your personality, would you use to help you get across this field? If that sign had clues on it to help you, what would it say? Think about it as long as you need, then start writing about yourself. Tell me what you’re like, who you are, so I can help you get across this empty field. Tell me what you think that sign should say. Be creative. Just write. Don’t stop until you’ve got nothing else to say.”
I thought about it. This is stupid, I thought. Then I played along and started thinking about myself. It came out like nothing I had ever told anyone before. It started like this:
“I am Blue-jays, deer, and pretty flowers.” (I really am, but nobody sees that side of me.)
“I am bright green grass.”
“I am nice plums in a tree.”
He looked stunned.
I didn’t tell him I thought what I really needed to get across that field was to be able to read that stupid sign. All that week I thought about that sign. I was sure it was a trick why I couldn’t read it.
Next week, he had more surprises for me. We started to read stuff on the laptop computer he got out of the classroom. When I got bored, he said, “Let’s take a break.”
That was all the opening I needed. “Can I show you something on the computer?” I asked him in my cutest voice.
He turned the laptop my way and I immediately went to the You Tube Music site.
“Whoah! We can’t go there.”
“Puh-le-ease?”
“OK, but just for a minute,” was his feeble attempt to stop me.
I went directly to my favorite song by Rihanna. She’s the best ever. She’s so-o-o cool. If she was here, I’d read her anything. He just sat there and listened while I read the lyrics on the screen and sang her latest hit. Then he let me do another song, but said, “we should turn the volume down a little.” That’s what adults always say.
When he took the laptop back, he was all smiles, “that was very good, you read those very well, and I liked your singing, too. Maybe we can do some more of that.” Then he asked me a really weird question: “I’d like you to start reading at home. How can we make that happen?”
I didn’t know. I used to read with my dad before he and my mom got divorced. Things got really messed up. We had to move. I had to go to another school. Mom had to get a job, and she was always too busy when she got home, then she was too tired after cooking and cleaning up, so I just went to bed and fell asleep. Dad used to read to me in bed, but mom just never did. That was the way it was. Just never read at home anymore, I guess.
The next week, he told me about this “club” he was starting up. It was called “Read to a Real Guinea Pig.” He said I’d get to take home a pet he had for a few days, a weekend, or whatever, and practice reading to it. I liked that idea. I asked Mom but she just hollered, “Not in my house! That’s a rat and you’re not bringing any rats into my house!” When I told Mr. Fred, he looked disappointed, and said he guessed he’d just have to be my guinea pig here at school.
He started bringing in poetry books for me to read. He said it was because I liked music, and he thought I should hear the music in reading. Huh? I liked poetry and I didn’t mind that some of it was about boys and goopy stuff, but music in reading? OK, I’ll admit some of it was really funny, and I almost liked it.
Anyway, I started to read it all pretty good, but some days I couldn’t sit still, and just didn’t care to do any reading at all.
“OK,” he’d say, “First, I want you to read two poems, then turn a few cartwheels up and down the hallway.”
“Really?” I couldn’t believe what he said so I played along. He kept his word.
Or he’d say, “OK, read two poems, then dance on the table for thirty seconds.”
One day during cartwheels, Ms. Clara came out and saw me. From the look on her face, I thought it was all over. “We need to have a talk at lunchtime,” she told Mr. Fred. Uh-oh. He’s in trouble. But I guess nothing happened, or at least not much, ’cause I kept doing cartwheels and dancing on the table, and didn’t even mind reading anything for the chance to do that.
He was so cool. Once, after I told him I had to be with my dad this weekend and wasn’t looking forward to it because his car smelled like smoke and his bathroom smelled like pee, he did something really weird, but it turned out nice. He brought me a can of vanilla air freshener.
“Spray this around. Tell him where you got it, tell him why,” he said, kinda’ like he was expecting he was gonna’ get in trouble from somebody, but didn’t care who. I didn’t want him to get in trouble, but I took it. It was the best weekend I’d had with Dad for a while—and Mr. Fred didn’t get in trouble.
Everything was going along really good. I even managed to make him my math practice person. He was in that class, too, but he had different students. When I found out he was playing music while they did practice problems in the hallway, I just had to be there.
One day, it was just too much for me, so when they got up to go there, I did too.
“Come back here, Melissa.” Ms. Alice sounded mad. “He’s not your tutor, and you know that.”
“But Ms. Alice, I’ve got to be there. If you want me to do better at math, I’ve just got to be there.”
“That’s not how it works. We can’t change the tutor schedule for you on a whim. That’s not going to happen. Please sit down and wait for your assigned tutor.” She was real mad, but I didn’t care. That’s not how I work. When I want something, I get it. I kept getting up, and she kept calling me back.
It wasn’t too long before my math tutor, Ms. Phyllis, was telling me:
“I’ve talked to Ms. Alice. She’s okay with letting you go out in the hall with Mr. Fred one day a week, if you promise to work extra hard when you’re with me. I talked to Mr. Fred, he says it’ll be harder for him, but he’ll do it if you promise to really try hard to read when you’re with him, too.”
That’s all I needed to hear. It was better than nothing, but like I said, I always get what I want. Reading was still hard, but I just knew I was getting better, and not just because Mr. Fred was still taking me out during math—and I started reading at home!
He gave me a book called Dork Diaries, which I totally liked. It was about a little girl, like me, who did all kinds of strange stuff. It was a big book, three hundred pages, but that didn’t scare me because it was really funny and I didn’t feel like I had to learn something by reading it. Mr. Fred was happy when I told him I was already on page two hundred in just two weeks. I told him I wanted a party when I finished it. How could he refuse?
But something always happens.
One day when I was getting out of ‘phonics’ practice (ugh!) with Ms. Pamela. I went down the stairs from her office and turned the corner at the bottom. There he was, doing math with my friend Raisha! I didn’t expect that, and I didn’t want him to see me, but it was too late. I tried to sneak by without looking at him, but I knew he saw me. He just didn’t let on he knew.
I’ve always been embarrassed by what I have to do with Ms. Pamela, ever since last year when Deena and Marci made fun of me on the playground.
“Babytalk! Babytalk! Melissa and Ms. Pamela doing Babytalk!
Now even Mr. Fred knew I went there. I couldn’t read at all the next time I saw him. He asked me what was going on. I had to tell him, “I hate Speech Learning. Phonics is boring. All we do is practice baby-talk. I did that all last year and I don’t like it. Ms. Pamela is so-o-o boring. I don’t want anyone to know I have to go there.”
But he was so cool with it. He just said, “I get that, you just want to be like everyone else. You’ll get there. I don’t like phonics, either, but let’s try to read something today, anyway.”
The next week, he told me he had a talk with Ms. Pamela. She said she couldn’t do anything about me being embarrassed about what I did in her office. It was her job and she thought she was good at it (she wasn’t) and it was helping me (it definitely wasn’t). He said his job was to do the other stuff that helped me use everything together. The only way I was going to get out of there was to keep reading with him. I know he really meant that, so I kept working at it.
It wasn’t always easy. I didn’t always like the chapter books he brought in, so I just refused to read for that day. But I kept trying, and it wasn’t all bad every day, anyway. There was eventually something he did that I really liked and would do it in a second without asking twice.
He started to ask my best friend Celia, out in the hallway to read with me. I would read a paragraph, then she would read the next. Pretty soon it was the whole page, and I was feeling pretty good. Even though Celia was a way better reader, she didn’t make me feel stupid for not being a good reader. She liked getting out of class time, anyway, so it was perfect for both of us.
I don’t know where he got the stuff he did, but he made me feel like math and reading was fun. By the end of the year, I didn’t even mind going to Ms. Pamela’s office, and that was something I never thought I’d like, ever.
I was proud to tell him one day I went to the library with my mom and picked out a really hard book, Warrior Cats, and I read it at home. Then I just had to show him I got a ninety-five on the spelling test, because I practiced. Actually, I knew them all, but I just got nervous.
I had a good year, and I didn’t care who knew it. I wanted to brag. On the last day of school, I saw Mr. Fred and Ms. Clara standing on the side of the playground. I put on my best smile and skipped over to them.
“I’m a reader now,” just came out of me without any practice.
Ms. Clara said what I expected her to say, “Congratulations, Melissa. You worked hard to get there and I’m really proud of you.”
But Mr. Fred looked like he was going to cry, except he was smiling, and said something I didn’t understand.
He said, “Thank you.”
Author: Al Tietjen
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