Friday, May 11, 2007

113 + 70.
Today Joshua completed this problem correctly, by himself, on the board.
We all clapped. We gave him 2 cheers instead of the usual one. I got out my cell phone and took a picture of him next to the problem. What I really wanted to do was cry but I couldn’t because they wouldn’t understand why I was crying.
The para in my room (my usual para has been on jury duty for a week) didn’t understand the big reaction.
“I used to sleep on the rug,” Joshua explained.
(And when he wasn’t sleeping I was begging him to sleep so I could teach, I thought to myself.)
“And when he stopped sleeping he couldn’t add 3 + 5,” I added.
“Not even with cubes,” he chimed in.
He was beaming.
So was I.
He’s come so far.
I’m not even sure how. I can pick out little mile stones, like the day I put a frog number line on his desk and he took it upon himself to keep it spotless, even though the inside of his desk is a disaster area, or the day we were playing a math game and he shouted, “6 times 6 is 36!” and I said, “How do you know that?” and he replied with a simple, “I was just thinking what you said about tallies and I got it.”
Somewhere it started clicking for him. He can add and subtract with regrouping and is beginning to multiply….and he used to use my fingers to add…progress requires reflection.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Hey, you know, just reading about this success made my day.
You're doing a great job.

LSquared32 said...

Wow--That is so cool!

Away with the fairies said...

This shows why people want to teach (apart from the holidays). What a lovely story. x