The most memorable day in my teaching career was the day when I saw Amr reading a book. I was then the anchor teacher of Godavari, a mixed age group class in The School, Chennai. Amr was in fifth standard then. He was a child with dyxlexia. He couldn’t read at all. But he had a good rapport with me. Actually I had a very good rapport with all the children in my class. There were ten fron class 5 , ten from class 6 and ten from class 7. I used to read out stories for Amr while others used to read for themselves. I used to make him enact the incidents in the story to make sure that he understood it clearly. We both used to play spelling games to give him confidence in his spelling abilities. Everyday I used to sit with him for half an hour while I assigned work for the others.
After about four months, once while I was reading, he asked me to give the book to him. First he went through the pictures. Then he asked me whether he could try reading it. Then suddenly he started reading the book slowly, letter after letter, word after word. I just watched him without making even a small sound. Once he finished a paragraph we both looked at each other and found that we both were crying. Only thing we could do at that moment was to hug each other tightly.
I am sure no words can express what I really felt at that moment.
Even now, after three years, when I get birthday wishes from most of my children in Godavari, I feel confident about myself being a teacher, I feel happy that I got the opportunity to teach them.
Anuradha