The most memorable moments of my teaching life may seem trivial to some but are truly momentous in my mind.

The class was a combined grade 2,3,4 group of cognitively delayed students. Roy was a feisty, tow-headed spitfire in grade 2. If marks were given solely for effort, Roy would score straight A’s. He put a tremendous amount of effort into all learning tasks, to little avail. His brain just couldn’t keep up with his desire and learning new concepts was very difficult for him.

The day the lightbulb came on for Roy was a memorable one for all of us in Room 8. We were doing a lesson which had the students spelling 3 and 4 letter words using letter tiles. We’d done this type of lesson many times before and Roy had always required one to one assistance. Letters and sounds held no meaning for him. I may as well have been asking him to spell in Sanskrit.

On this particular day, I could see him struggling away with his tiles, refusing help, a look of fierce determination on his face. He’d try one tile, then another, decide it wasn’t right and swipe all the tiles from his spelling stick in frustration. I asked the class to spell ‘boy’. Slowly, Roy picked up a ‘b’ and put it on the stick, then an ‘o’. He studied the letters for a moment and then, with hesitation, he picked up a ‘y’ and set it next to the ‘o’. I could literally see the flash of understanding light up his eyes. His hand shot up in the air to be the one to spell the word for the whole class, for the first time ever. When we asked him how he’d figured it out he announced, with a smile that broke his face apart,” I just thunk real hard and then I got it!”

From that day on Roy began to make sense of letters and sounds and in time he got what he’d always wanted. He became a reader.

Posted in classroom