A Poor student: A snapshot

He walks into my classroom every morning, dragging his feet, stepping on his long large pants that no belt can hold up to his waist. His thin white shirt is the only top that he wears even in the middle of bitter cold days. Even though he never complains when he shivers from the cold, his face shows the pain.

He greets me and sits at his desk asking for a pencil, an eraser and a sharpener to get ready for class work. His eyes follow me anxiously wherever I move. His face is always covered with dried tears that he seems to keep forgetting to wash off his visage.

No desk or chair fit his small frail size and short height. When class begins his fingers grab the pencil gently and begin inscribing what’s on the board. i.e, date, words to copy down etc. During this effort his eyes are focused on the paper, his tongue sticks out and his head tilts slightly to the side following his hand and what it does on the paper as if the rest of the classroom has ceased to exist during that moment.

During letter writing lessons that we do every Thursday he takes his time to align his few sentences and to assign numbers to them in an artistic way which make them look like a paragraph. He never omits to illustrate what he writes as a way of better expressing his thoughts. His drawings are always detailed and the colors he chooses for them are remarkably beautiful.

As much as he loves to learn, he struggles like all my other students with writing and reading. But unlike other students he worries great deal about his progress in class.

When he finishes writing his sentences and have them corrected, he shares his writing with the classroom by standing in front of them and reading out loud what he wrote. His back looks much curved when he stands, his hands small but firmly hold his letter that he takes pride in reading it slowly as if enjoying the power of “success” even if it is small.© Lyna 2009