Wednesday March 21st,
2012
One of my favorite parts of our school days now are when I sit down with
Kelsey to read. Though I had a small
share in helping my little brothers and few others, this is the first time I am
able to participate in the entire process of a child learning to read, and it
is truly incredible. I remember two
years ago, in preschool, when she was just learning the letters and the sounds
they make. She, and I sometimes, would
get so frustrated at how long it took her to sound out simple words like “dog”
and “bat.” She would lose interest
quickly, and I thought I was doing it all wrong and all she would learn is to
hate reading. But after a year of Kindergarten
in the States she had had enough repetition and practice that by the beginning
of our school year this September the sounds finally made sense, making our
reading time much less tedious. In fact,
she even began to enjoy reading the
short little books I chose for her to work through during the week. All of that was exciting, but it wasn’t until
this semester that we both had a breakthrough.
It was this semester that she finally
realized that these random words are actually saying something. Soon she
was eager to sound out even the difficult words so she could move on to the
others and discover what happened next in the story. Kelsey is finally seeing the treasures that
are hidden in these things called books, and realizing how priceless is the
ability to put sounds and words together to discover them for herself. The result is delightful, both for her and
for her teacher.
Now, this process isn’t always
smooth, for often now, in her eagerness to find out what the words are telling
her she tries to take short cuts. Once
she thinks she has the general idea of a sentence, she glances at the first
letter of the next word and just guesses, putting in the word she thinks would
make the most sense. It is a continual
patience-requiring procedure I have to go through with her each time she does
this, for once she has a certain word in her head, whether it is the correct
one or not, it is hard to convince her otherwise, and the sounding out takes
even longer. At first I thought,
‘Doesn’t she just want to know what its really says? It would save her so much time and me so much
frustration!’
But is she really so different from
us? I recall many times when God gave me
something to do and my response was, ‘Okay, but I’m gonna do it this way, ‘cause I think this is
better,’ or even, ‘That’s not really
what He means; that would take too much time, so I’ll just go this way
instead.’ Our ideas and short cuts are
so often better than His, or so we think.
Why do we think that way? Why can’t we just listen to what He’s really
saying? It would save us so much time
and frustration! Exactly.
And so I am still learning more
than I am teaching. And while Kelsey
continues to encounter new adventures through the stories she can now read to
herself, and I revel in sharing these discoveries with her, we are both
learning patience, and how to do what we are told, how we are told, whether we
are sounding out a word, or obeying one of God’s commands.
