Learning to read

I've been helping a young man learn to read.  Kids can fall through the cracks in Haitian schools so easily.  Schools aren't equipped with specialists who are able to assess special needs, and even if someone were able to assess special needs, there would be no one trained to work with the special needs kid. 

This nine year old boy lives with a family who graciously took him in.  He is the son of a mom who is mentally unstable and has a drinking problem.  The father is not much better.  SO, this kind family took in the boy and sent him to school.  But he didn't do well in school.  I imagined he was suffering from low IQ (knowing both of his parents).  When they told me two different schools had let him go, I decided to see if I could identify a problem with the boy's ability to learn.  I was surprised by his clear speech, vocabulary, and general intelligence.  I began teaching him to read.  It has been slow, but he now regularly recognized 8 Haitian vowels and is able to tie them to about 8 different consonants with a decent degree of reliability. 

His eyes travel all over the room, though.  I'm guessing he would be diagnosed with an attention deficit.  I work to keep his eyes on a page while we try to read. 

But, what a joy helping a young person to read.  It's something I'd like to do more often.  Maybe next year.  There are so many kids who drop out of school because they never learn reading skills.