One Person at a Time

I would love to share with you the life of someone who inspires me. I would really love to but I have made a promise to keep his confidentiality. He is my adult literacy student. Any details about him such as name or place of employment cannot be shared but I will tell you how wonderfully simplistic his dream is.

My student wants to be able to read the newspaper as he sits on his front porch. He's not a mandatory student sent to me through probation or parole. He's not just trying to grab his driver's license and go on about his business.

No, he wants to be able to sit in a rocking chair on his front porch and read his newspaper from cover to cover. How awesome is that? How many of us take for granted our world of reading and writing?

Yet here is a man a bit older than me with a car newer and nicer than mine and his main desire in life is to read. He defers to me as if worried or scared that I will lose interest. I won't. What he doesn't see, what he can't understand, is that he is blessing me every bit as much as he thinks I am blessing him.

This man is terrified that someone will learn his secret. He feels embarrassed by it. He was a victim of a time and place when it was common practice for children to fall by the wayside academically. Due to an illness, he missed out on two very important learning years in grade school and just kept getting passed on to the next grade.

We know differently now. We know what to look for in terms of dyslexia and ADHD and phonics and so forth. We have politically stated that children have a right to an education. We have child labor laws and truancy officers and children are encouraged to stay in school.

This man is from a different time. Through no fault of his own he fell through the cracks of a system that wasn't as well-tuned as the one we have today.

It took him decades to reach the point of seeking help. It's not going to take him long to make up for that. He's like a sponge soaking it all in. He thanked me the first time we met for being willing to help him. Yet he is the one with courage and strength and I truly admire him.

Just to show him how much faith I have in him, when he finishes his third skill book, I'm getting him a one-year subscription to our local paper.

He'll have to buy the rocking chair himself.