It breaks my heart
I try not to pick favorites amongst my students. It leads to teacher's pets and unconsciously unfair treatment over others. But I do have one. And I learned something about him today that made me stop and mist up right in the Special Ed. office.

He's a 7-year-old who loves King Kong and dinosaurs. He speaks with an adorable Spanish accent. He's been my student since September and I've continually wondered why he's not making better progress in English, reading, and writing. In ESL, he still translates his ideas directly from Spanish and they come out with a decidedly non-English morphology. But it's cute, and I can understand it, so I assumed it was just a fluke. After all, his reading speed had been improving, slowly but surely.

He's always working hard and listening to the teacher. He comes into school every day with new dinosaur information, or with new stories about King Kong to tell (or dvd information- "Miss Walters. If you buy Papa John's pizza, they give you free $2 for Kong!"

However, his reading comprehension was so low that I sponsored his Special Ed. They've been assessing him for a while. I gave him his Spring evaluation, and I realized that his oral fluency has gone down 3 points since last year. I finally got some news today: he doesn't qualify for Special Ed. because his ability is alligned with his intelligence. The cause of his problems is simply a very low IQ.

I misted up when I heard that: with a label- ADHD, LD, RD- you have something to work with, something to "overcome" or provide strategies for. This has no easy solution. I know it's not like the poisoned lives of children in the Sudan or Thailand, or many other places in the world, but is an example of the idea that anytime a child is not allowed to live up to their potential- even if it's the stupid dreams of his teacher- it's a sad day for everyone. I know this little boy will do amazing things someday, though, because he's so kind to everyone. I hope he can be an archeaologist, which he agreed was a perfect profession for him once I explained it. And he has a loving family, that's really all that matters.

In American, students like him are lucky. They are not delegated to manual labor at a young age, not teased and tormented by educators, not forced into a lower caste. He will always struggle in school, though, and there's nothing I can do to help him.