A Beautiful Day

After being hit by Hurricane Tomas on October 30th and the subsequent canceled week of school, today marked the start of my first full work week as a Peace Corps volunteer.

After a marriage proposal, a request for a date, and having met two new friends, I finally made it to the school and was told all about the death of a litter of puppies by a little girl in grade 2 named Makenna:

Me: What's your dogs name?
Makenna: Rosie
Me: What a good name! So she's a girl?
Makenna: Yes, and she's made puppies before, but they all died.
Me: How did they die?
Makenna: Well there were four. One died of starvation, two died because of other dogs, and my brother sat on one and it exploded.
Me: It explosed!?!?!?
Makenna: Yes. He's very fat.

She tells great stories.

I spent the morning cleaning the library. It isn't secure from the elements and the hurricane caused about 15 pounds of the outdoors to blow in and coat everything with a thick layer of muck. A few grade 5 students came in to help me so the work went quickly.

After lunch I started pulling kids in grades 2 and 3 one at a time to assess where they are in relation to reading. I held up flashcards to see if they knew their letter names and sounds (many don't) and then used a diagnostic test consisting of 10 grade appropriate words that they should be able to read. I also had chosen age appropriate stories for each group and after testing the students I gave them the choice to either read the book to me or have the book read to them.

Every child chose to have the book read to them except one: Marco.

"I'd like to try to read it," he said to me.

Marco's in grade 3 and knew all of his alphabet but could only read about half of the age appropriate words. I had to help him through the whole book, but he finished it and seemed pretty happy with himself.

At the end of the day I went to talk to his teacher about how well he had done and that he had been the only child who had wanted to make the effort to read the book to me.

She smiled and said, "I know! He came back here and told me, 'I had a great time with Miss!' He told me that he read through an entire book with you and he recited the entire story to me, so I told him that he could retell it to the whole class first thing in the morning!"

She then thanked me for helping with all the kids and we all headed home.

As Peace Corps Volunteers, we're warned that we won't see results for up to a year after we begin our service and that we're almost never going to hear "thank you." It seems to me that there's no greater result than being able to see a child actually feel proud enough about having read a whole book that they can't wait to share it with their teacher and classmates.

Today definitely made me feel like being here has been, and will continue to be, worth everything that I have and will put into it.

I can't wait for tomorrow!