There’s a Monster in Room 301

(Editor’s Note: This is part one in a two-part series)

A few months back, I had traveled to Boston. Upon flying into Logan International, I took a cab from the airport and happened to get into a guy named Tony’s cab.

At first, I didn’t think anything of it. Honestly, I had a million of other things in my mind: I was nauseous about the cab fare (which is significantly higher than DC’s), ridiculously tired from teaching that day (which is why I didn’t talk much), and I was trying to send out a couple of quick emails. But I felt God simply asking me to stop. To put those things down for a minute and talk to the man giving me a ride.

So I did.

I asked him how long he’d lived in Boston. He said he’d been there twelve years, but that his home was originally from Nigeria. Next, he turned the question on me, asked me what I did, where I was from, the usual. I explained that I was originally born and raised in Texas, but that now I live in DC where I teach Special Education. Small chat really. But the bit about Texas caught his attention first, which is very understandable. I mean, who isn’t attracted to that word–”Texas?”

“Texas?!” He says. “I’ve been to Floyd, TX!” He had this kind of brightness in his tone.

“FLOYD, TX?!?! Why on earth did you go to Floyd, TX?” I said.

I did not share that same brightness, but more of a concern as to why he’s only visited a tiny unincorporated area in the Lone Star state.

“Well, my church goes out there for a conference that I attend every summer,” he responded.

“Get out! That’s awesome! Well, the conference I’m going to right now is a Christian conference,” I said.

“Wait,” He nervously interrupts. “You said you were a teacher right? Do you think you could help me?”

A little hesitant as to what the request could be, I said, “Sure.”

“You see, my son is nine years old, and he cannot read.”

At this point, he took a quick breath as if those words still stung when they came out of his mouth. And then he continued about how he’s been trying to teach his son how to read for years. How he and his wife have read to him since he’s been a baby. And how nothing has worked for him. They said they constantly encourage him, but no matter their efforts, he just can’t read. And not even the Bible.

“You know it’s important to me for my son to learn how to read,” He says to me, “If he can’t read, then what? His life is destined to be no good, but mostly because that’s how you access everything in the world. You read, and if you can’t do that, then what?”

He invited me to church on Sunday, we exchanged contact information, and I promised to email him the name of some schools I know of in the area who have a reputation for having a dramatic impact on students with significant learning difficulties such as his son’s. A few months later while my wife and I were honeymooning in Napa Valley, I received a phone call from Boston and picked it up during lunch one afternoon. It was Tony. The school I had recommended ended up taking his son, and months later he remembered to call some stranger in his cab to say thank you.

Unfortunately, this isn’t an isolated incident. This wasn’t some exception to the rule that nine year-olds don’t know how to read. It wasn’t my only encounter with a stranger asking me to help their child. On a Saturday Night in 2008, I de-boarded my delayed American Airlines flight into a dimly lit New Orleans and found out my luggage didn’t show up. I left to the parking lot and waited for the Dollar Rent-a-Car shuttle to pick me up. Here I met Freddie, the driver of the shuttle, and also one of the only smiling people that I met in New Orleans during my visit.

Freddie asked me why I was in NOLA, how long I planned on staying, where I was from, etc. After explaining to him about how I was looking to join Teach for America, his face immediately lit up.

Making that connection, I asked him what he thought about it all–the new charter schools and education reform. In a very sincere way, he looked deeply at me through the rearview mirror and spoke with tears in his eyes, “My son can actually go to a school and get a good education. These charter schools, they’re like private schools but they’re free. It’s almost hard to believe from what I grew up with. It’s incredible!” Then he paused. And the next thing he said has since etched itself in the walls of my conscience:

“Are you one of the ones who is coming to change things?”

I sort of froze because I could tell he was seriously asking a college student riding in his shuttle bus if he was going to make change? And the sad part about it was that I could tell my answer carried a considerable amount of weight for Freddie. Like depending on how I answered his question, I would either put a nail in the conversation and really ruin his night. OR I would burn brightly in the midnight of New Orleans and reassure him that people really did care about him and his son.

“I hope so”, I said to him. When I said that, his face drew a smile as big as Texas,

“Good.” He said.

So here is the first challenge of being Jesus I’ve learned as an educator: people rely on you to do incredible things. To teach nine-year olds, 10-year olds, 13-year olds, 15-year olds, and, yes, even 18-year old kids how to read. People who are not much older than I am.

When I began assessing my children this year to see where their reading levels were, I quickly realized that five of my students with disabilities were functionally illiterate, reading on average at kindergarten reading level. “How did this happen?” I thought to myself. “Who let this happen?” was the next question I asked. “Did anyone actually try to teach these kids? If not, have they lost their jobs yet? And if they did try, well.. what does that mean for me? I mean, if someone tried and they are still here, then what if I fail them to?” This is the part where an uncomfortable moment of doubt makes itself at home. I mean what do you do with five children who are functionally illiterate?

Well, you teach them, of course.

To say that this challenge has been overwhelming would be to significantly understate the problem. Even more, it would be significantly undermining the giants facing my children and their families right now, which was this proverbial monster who would not let them read. My job was to figure out a way for them to beat that monster. To move them from saying, “I can’t read or I don’t know to read.” to “Mr Worthington, I really don’t like Captain Ahab because he’s selfish. I think Starbuck should be leading that ship.“ and “Mr Worthington, I can only find two reasons Frederick Douglass wanted to read so bad! Where’s the third?! Man, this book is killing me!.”

To do this successfully is no small task. Slaying monsters is the work of heroes in comic books, not teachers. Yet, unfortunately, most of us are in that position.

So teachers, where do you find yourself? What kind of monsters do your children face in their classrooms? What incredible things are you being asked to do?