. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . P A R O L E . C A L L

Traffic has been light in my school the past few days. Yesterday, I only had two students after lunch. Both of these gals, in their 40s, are low-level readers — between fourth and sixth grade. I busted out my new set of easy readers, choosing one titled Reading Changed My Life, which contains three true stories. I sat with my students at a circular table and we began to read the one told by a Mexican woman who comes to the United States as a child in a migrant farm family. Poverty, abuse, and violence pervade her story. Her father is an alcoholic who beats her. She marries a man who raped her and has a daughter. Growing up poor and itinerant she never learned to read. However all that changes when, after leaving her husband, she picks up her young daughter’s Dr. Seuss books and starts teaching herself to read. It nearly brought me to tears working with my students, helping them to brave reading aloud. For me the saddest part was not the horrors of the story we read together but the fact that my students see this is as everyday life.