A Wundrful Theng

One of my students, B, is a gentle giant. She's taller than everyone else, which, to some, may make her intimidating at first glance, but once you speak to her, you realize that she'd rather nurse an injured bird back to health than beat up on a gaggle of hoodrats. She's one of my best students; she never needs me to babysit her or get on her case for not working. She never puts her head down. She never talks back. She raises her hand when something doesn't make sense. She tries and tries and tries again and again and again.

But she's dyslexic.

This caused her to be put into my inclusion class, which is a form of special education, or remediated learning. She can't spell very well at all, so people automatically think that she's not bright when they see her writing. But she is. She's so bright. And she's come a LONG way since the beginning of the year. I've worked with her on her spelling, and if you can get past the spelling errors, you'll find that what you just read is pretty great for her age. I spelled the title of this post, "A Wundrful Theng," to emphasize the fact that, although something is spelled wrong and not perfect on the surface, it can surprise you what is inside, and it's the same with B.

She also loves - no, admires - no, worships - no, would-just-in-front-of-a-train-just-to-see-one-more-game - the Memphis Grizzlies, our NBA team. They're having a contest where a Memphis student can submit an essay about his or her favorite teacher. I was very honored that B wrote this:






She's such a hard worker that she's coming into Saturday School tomorrow so that we can clean it up and type it to send in to the Grizzlies. I'm not the only one that's helped, so I wish she would've written it about all her teachers. Ms. Ybarra tosses math at her like it's nobody's business. I can hear Ms. Dugas, from across the hall, squawking (for humor's sake) stuff about the legislative and executive branches. Ms. Riser teaches her how to love the arts and, thus, life. It's a team effort, but she's benefitting from it.

Our gentle giant.