Oddie Read a Book

                I tutor throughout the day. When I first started, teachers recommended students to me that needed a bit more help in reading. I took these students, tested each of them, and selected thirteen. Most read at a pre-school or kindergarten level. Three of my students couldn’t read at all. They are all over the age of ten.

            Lately, however, I’ve been working particularly hard with one of these three students—Oddie. We’ve been following along a modified Montessori-model. Essentially, we first worked on rhyming sounds to understand that different letters make different sounds and same letters make the same sounds. From there, we’ve moved on to learning individual phonics. Montessori recommends learning phonics sounds in groups and not in alphabetical order. We have now worked our way through the letters M, S, A, T; B, F, O, X; W, I, J, L; and G, C, U, P. Oddie can identify each of the phonic sounds for these letters, including long and short vowel sounds.

            This is vastly different from my other students, where we have followed a more alphabetized model for phonics sounds. Most of them still struggle with the vowel sounds and some of the more uncommon letters (X, Y, V, both sounds of G, W, Q to name a few). More importantly, they may be able to identify the sound of “I” when I show them the letter, but are unable to produce the sound when reading words. Sounding out words phonetically is incredibly hard for most of the kids and while they theoretically know that the letter “I” sounds like /i/, they forget it while reading. Instead they’ll replace it with /e/ or /u/ or make up a word entirely.

            At the end of the day, however, they’re at a different level. They can read basic books and they know some sight words. They came to tutoring already recognizing almost all of the letters of the alphabet and knowing some of the sounds for the letters. Oddie didn’t come with that base knowledge.

            But, he has progressed rapidly with the sets of letters I’ve given him, and we have reached the point where he has read a book! He’s read two, actually. And it can be slow at times and I’ll have to help, but he can sound out words. The first book we read, he had to sound out the word “is” every single time. He struggled with the sound for “I” for a long time, so every time we reached a word with “I” in it we had to stop and work through the different sounds. He still does that, but I don’t have to prompt him to think about the sounds (“What sounds do “I” make?”) and he remembers all of the sounds himself without my help. And the word “is” has become a sight word that we can just move right along with while reading.

            This may seem like a small matter—what 11-year-old, English-speaking boy can’t recognize the word “is?”—but it’s an astronomical difference from where we were nine months ago. I’d certainly like to take all the credit (and if you ask JVC, I’m solely responsible) but I highly doubt that my efforts are the only factor contributing to Oddie’s recent success.

            For some time, he’s been highly motivated to read. While we were working through rhyming words, he kept asking me “when can I read a book?” and was frustrated when I would hold him back. He wants to learn, so he is pushing himself to move quicker.

            And therein lays the main difference between him and most of my students. Most of them hate school. They hate it because it’s difficult and because they never learned to read and are now in middle school and school is much harder at this stage (especially when you can’t read). They hate it because they can’t focus (and they can’t focus because they have undiagnosed PTSD or ADHD). They hate it because they get yelled at and beat at home, and then they come to school and it’s much of the same. They hate it because everyone sees them as bad kids and treat them as such.

            But they hate school, and that has made them hate learning and hate reading. But Oddie doesn’t hate school, in part, because he’s not in the “bad boy crew.” He doesn’t often get into fights or trouble, and for the most part, he’s a pretty good kid. This makes school more pleasant. But he does see his peers advancing, and recognizes that he isn’t going as fast as them. He wants to be where his peers are. He wants to read.

            So it’s slow, but it’s not as slow as it can be. And I teach, but it’s Oddie’s own desire to get better that is getting him to read.

"Miss, I got a 100%"

As part of my job as librarian, I spend a considerable part of my day tutoring students in reading. I currently work with fifteen boys and one girl, helping them memorize their ABCs and practicing the sounds of the letters.

            The majority of my students are in Standard Four, the equivalent of 5^th or 6^th grade back in the States. Most of these students read at a preschool level which makes school a relative nightmare for most of the boys. Without the ability to read, they cannot do most of their work—from language arts, to social studies and science, to homework, and even to math. They have nothing else to do all day but cause trouble. In that, they certainly excel.

            So I spend my time in-between breaks and library hours working one-on-one with the students, repeating the sounds over and over, and sentences over and over, and helpful tricks over and over, in the hopes that they’ll start grasping reading a little bit better.

            Occasionally, however, I put the flashcards down and help them with their class work. I’ll read out the story and the questions, and let them determine what the answer is. Slowly, I’ll spell out the words that they say, testing if they know their alphabet.

            A while back, I was working with one of my students on his class work. We read a poem, and began working on the questions. They were fairly easy—most of the questions contained words or phrases from the poem that we would go find and then write down that sentence. I showed him how to look through the poem for those words instead of having to repeatedly read it over and over. We finished, he left, and I grabbed my next student.

            While working with him (we were going through the same poem and questions), my first student comes running into the library.

            “Miss, miss! I got 100%!” He yells, interrupting my current session. He runs over to us, and starts explaining to my student and I how he’s going to just look at the last couple words in the question from now on and then find them in the story. He points to the question and where to find it in the story to prove he remembers how to do it. He then runs back out of the room, and my current student does a much better job of finding the next answer.

            There was such pride in his voice—it’s rare for my students to do well at school, and for him to work hard and achieve academically was a new experience for him. He found the answers himself, and I may have helped, but he did his work himself. He achieved that 100%, and it made him proud of himself. Whereas normally he fails, he excelled. And that is certainly a rarity.

            I really struggle with this student. He rarely wants to come to tutoring, and it’s normally a battle between him, his teacher, and me to even get him into the room. Once there, he is excited to learn and prove how smart he is. But it takes a while to get there.

            So to see him this excited for school is unbelievable. He even asked me the other day why I didn’t grab him for tutoring, which is a far cry from his normal attitude towards it.  Now, I have no doubts that this is one of the more rare moments. He’s since gotten into fights with students and been disciplined by his teacher. For the most part, his behavior and attitude haven’t changed. But, hopefully, he will remember that he is capable and has achievements that he can be proud of. 

I Jumped Off a Cliff

Since I have been living in beautiful Belize for over three months now, I figured it was time to start the crazy little blog I’ve been planning to write. As my high school English classes taught me, organization is key in writing, so we must start at the beginning.

When I first arrived in Belize, all the way back in July, we immediately jumped into In-Country Orientation (ICO). Now, ICO is full of many memorable moments from playing the Garifuna drums, to making rice and beans (with and without plastic bags), to cliff jumping.

I have always wanted to go cliff jumping as it seems like a good idea in theory. It so happens that I had the opportunity to partake during ICO. We were in the Toledo district, visiting the second JV community in Punta Gorda (PG). While there, we went to the incredible Rio Blanco which is filled with lush trees, dazzling waterfalls, and ice-cold water (a welcome relief from the overbearing humidity and heat of Belize). There is also a cliff that we all proceeded to jump off of. When they ask, “Would you jump off a cliff if your friends do,” I apparently have to answer, “Yes.”

Waterfalls at Rio Blanco

            Jumping off a cliff is a perfect metaphor for joining JVC. When you finally commit to jumping, it’s terrifying. You’re falling, and you have no control, and (in my case) there’s a whole lot of screaming involved. Then suddenly you’re in the water, and it’s over in a blink of an eye. You decide to jump, you fall, you land—all so sudden.

Except stepping into the decision to do post-graduate service in an international setting was not a spur of the moment decision. It certainly was terrifying once I joined, and there were several moments when I asked myself, “What the heck am I doing?” But I didn’t show up on a random Tuesday and decide to leap.

            This decision has been building for a long time now, and if there’s any comfort I can provide for the family and friends that I have left behind for two years, it’s that I know it’s the right one. You see, this journey began all the way back in middle school when I volunteered at a soup kitchen once a month. But, it wasn’t so firmly cemented until my sophomore year of college. At the end of that year, I traveled to Guatemala on an immersion trip. There, I met people who experienced acts of genocide and yet were still fighting for their rights and their homes.

            While in Guatemala we traveled to a small village called Rio Negro where a horrifying massacre occurred during the 80’s. The country had dissolved into civil war after the military committed a coup. The United States replaced the democratic government with a dictatorship, which then proceeded to systematically kill the indigenous Mayans in the country.

            The Guatemalan government had wanted to build a dam that would destroy many villages, including Rio Negro. The people of the community were outspokenly anti-dam, so the military silenced the village. The dam was built, the village destroyed, and hundreds of lives were lost.

            The village has since rebuilt, although further up the mountains than before (the original village is completely underwater now). I spent several days in Rio Negro, talking with locals, and learning about their experiences the night strangers came to their town and killed their families. Yet, when I remember the people of Rio Negro, I remember their strength first. They had everything taken from them, but they still held hope that their community could be restored. They still worked for justice, for their dignity, and for the dignity of those who had died. They refused to be silenced—their voice is their only weapon against a great, big, powerful government, and they use it to the best of their ability.

            I joined JVC to find that strength that I had witnessed on a warm May night in Guatemala replicated throughout the world. I joined JVC to hear the voices of people that are normally so silenced being used to uplift and renew communities. I joined JVC to learn about this world I live in, and to recognize that we are all connected. We are all one—brothers and sisters—and the dignity and value of my brothers and sisters throughout this world are being trotted upon. And that makes me angry. And that makes me act.

            Being here, I have come to realize that it all boils down to ignorance, and the fact that I am not ignorant. I know what takes place in this world. I know there are children who go to bed hungry, who will never learn how to read, who have parents who are absent, abusive, or neglectful. And because I know, I have to act. I have been blessed with the power and privilege to work for a better world, and it seems like an awful waste of all my gifts to stand by and let it burn.

            So I will act, and I will learn, and hopefully, the people of Belize and I will find a little bit of strength in each other.