Short Cuts

Wednesday March 21^st, 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.