Mi Nombre

My 3rd Grade Reading Small Group

Look at these sweet faces. These four kiddos are in my reading pull-out group 3 times a week. They are all in the third grade, and sadly, they still do not know how to read. When I began working with them, I thought we could start with phonetic blends, like “cha, che, chi, da, de, do,  ma, me, etc.” but after our first class, I realized that we needed to go back to square one: learning the alphabet, identifying letters, and learning what sounds each individual letter makes. Today we were practicing vowels: a, e, i, o, and u. The kids did a great job, so I gave them each a small certificate to reward them for their good behavior and hard work. I asked them each to tell me how to spell their name for more practice with identifying letters. I came to my last student and asked her “What letter does your name start with?” She stared at me. I asked her again, with no response. I then asked her to write her name for me so I could tell her the letters and then copy her name onto her certificate. She took a pencil in her hand, and tried to write her name. “Aba” she wrote, and then looked at me and said “I don’t know the rest.”  I sadly stared at the letters she had written. Even those three letters were incorrect.

This 9 year old does not know how to write her own name.

Maybe this is just my teacher’s heart breaking, but does this sadden you as much as it saddens me? When did you learn to write your name? Most of us probably went to preschool or kindergarten already knowing the letters in our name and how to put them on paper. If not, we definitely learned when we went to school. And this beautiful girl has been in school for at least 3 years and still doesn’t know what letters are in her name. I imagine her shame as she sits in class and is asked to put her name on her paper, but can’t. I imagine her embarrassment when other students see her work and know that her name is spelled incorrectly. I imagine her discomfort when her teacher points to a letter in her name and she can’t tell her what letter it is.

Every year in my American classroom, I have read a book to my students called “The Day of Ahmed’s Secret.” I love this book. It follows a young Arab boy through his day of hard work, delivering jugs of water up countless flights of stairs, pulling a wagon through the dusty, muggy streets of his city, all the while holding a secret in his heart which he plans on revealing to his family that evening. My students listen with growing suspense – “What is Ahmed’s secret?!” they wonder. We make a list of predictions on the board.  I get to the last page, and then I stop and tell them we will continue the next day. My students groan in anticipation. “Please, Miss Barber, can’t we finish?! We have to know what his secret is!” I make them wait all night to find out. The next day, we finish the book, and we discover that Ahmed’s secret is that he has learned to write his name. My students give me confused looks mixed with a bit of disappointment. He learned to write his name? That’s what he was so excited about all day? They don’t get it. And as much as I love this book, neither did I.

Until today.

I get it now.

And I can’t wait to see the smile on sweet Alba Iris’s face when she can confidently tell me how to spell her name, and write it correctly for me over and over again. We’ll get there. Please pray for my sweet friend, and for the countless others like her at this school and at schools all over the world. The next time you write your name, think about what a privilege it is – a privilege that many in our world still do not have.