When I went to first grade, I had never been to kindergarten or pre-school. We just went to school.
I had a hard time learning to read. Mama had read to me almost every night and told me stories and I could tell the stories back to her. But when it came to reading—it was a mystery to me.
My first grade teacher. Mrs. Pickle, had groups of us children come to the back of the classroom to sit on little wooden chairs in a semi circle around a large rolling black board. On the board, she had written in perfectly formed white chalk letters the words to a story in a paragraph.
We were to read the paragraph without making mistakes. We went around the group and each child read. When they read the story, she ceremoniously gave them their first red reader of Dick and Jane.
Each time it was my turn, I missed a word. I distinctly remember missing the word ROBIN once. I was never given a book.
Finally, one day, Mrs. Pickle was walking by my desk and nonchalantly dropped the elusive, treasured red reader on my desk, saying, “Well, Connie, I guess I’ll have to give you your book since everyone else in the class has gotten theirs.”
Well, I was thrilled! Only later did I realize what she had really said. What she had meant. She was giving up on me. She thought I couldn’t do it. I was last and left behind.
But my mama hadn’t heard those words or seen those actions. She worked with me every night holding up sight word cards endlessly, sitting in her rocking chair with me sitting in front of her on the floor. We worked on those words until we were both in tears of frustration.
Finally, one day, I had a revelation! I could only read the words in one direction~. Was did not strangely and mysteriously become saw~. You couldn’t read from left to right and then from right to left. THERE didn’t transform into EREHT when I looked away and back again.
It turns out I had a form of dyslexia. Mine caused by a lack of dominance on one side of my body. Usually a person has a dominant eye, hand, leg they lead with. I didn’t. I came to understand my problem, learned to solve it, and practiced until it became natural to read from right to left. Reading from a board at a distance or from cards held up in space with no clear left right orientation was the hardest way to read for me. Through repetition it had dawned on me —the key to reading.
I went on to become a teacher—with a masters in educational technology—-and a writer. What if Mama had given up on me?
Ephesians 4:29. “Let no corrupt communication come out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers.”
When your children have trouble in school, be an encourager, build them up, and help them. Don’t tear down. Words are powerful; use them carefully.
