Jack’s Project

Something rather wonderful has happened in my morning class, which is a special demographic (older).

About ten days ago one of my students (I’ll call him Jack) approached me to ask if his friend from level one (with 22 students) could join our class, which at that time numbered only nine students. I told him that his friend, whom I’ll call Carl, could sit in and give it a try, but that he would probably not fit in due to his level. This is a gentleman who has been repeating level one for a few years. I don’t know if he has a learning disability; the consensus among my boss and colleagues is that he lacks intrinsic motivation and doesn’t put forth any effort. My lessons are geared toward a level three or high two to low three.

Anyway, I let my boss know what Jack had up his sleeve. My boss discouraged the idea saying that if I devoted too much class time to trying to rescue Carl, I could lose the other students.  I agreed and told Jack that.

But Jack did not give up that easily. He continued to hound me about it at every opportunity.  So I went back to my boss and asked if we could try it for a few days. He said that if Jack wanted to take on Carl as his pet project, he could do so. Jack and Carl were both thrilled with the news. I was eager to see if the rumours were true or not. Would Carl prove to be lazy and lacking in motivation to learn or study?

Jack asked me to print out some exercises for Carl to do at home, so I started him off with the most basic of literacy material: circling letters and letter combinations. I also recommended a phonics website for use at home.

So far it seems to be going well. Carl and Jack sit together; Jack helps Carl all through class.  If the rest of the class has a worksheet that is too hard for Carl, Jack will tell him “circle such-and-such a word as many times as you can find it.” He is a very good assistant teacher!

So far Carl has done all the homework I’ve assigned him. He is working his way toward being able to say all the letters of the alphabet, recognize the words “first name, last name, address, city, street, province, telephone number, postal code, social insurance number, health card number, date of birth.” Next he has to be able to fill out a simple form and also spell his name out loud correctly. Those are our early goals.

Today as I was going toward the teachers’ washroom during break, I saw him visiting his level one friends. They were asking him when he was coming back. He smiled, pointed me out to them and said, “No come back…teacher Kelly.”

It’s a beautiful thing to witness–the way this class has bonded, the way they look out for one another. I feel so privileged to be a part of it.

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