Every Tuesday – Thursday, a few of my team members and I tutor at the school here in the mornings. When we first started, I think we were all expecting that we would be helping out kids ages 10 and ^ with math or something. ….. Nope. We tutor little children on the alphabet, the sounds letters make, vowels, and short three letter words. Thats all they need to know to get to second grade. Sounds easy enough right?
You'd think so! Some of the kids are rockstars. They can spout off words that i think are pretty tough and they could probably say the alphabet backwards. But the other kids, the ones who really need the help, also have the shortest attention spans. Except for this sweet girl that i started to work with almost every day i was there. We'll just call her Grace for now. Grace is absolutely adorable. But when we started to go through the alphabet, i noticed that she had a lot of trouble with pretty much all the letters. I'll hold up a flashcard with the letter G on it and she thinks for a while, then she'll say "……..Q?" Close! But no. I started to notice that she has a particular fondness for the letter Q because almost every letter is Q, except of course, the letter Q.
After a few days we got most of the alphabet down and we moved on to sounds. It's funny, almost every letter makes the sound "Q." Not the qua sound that Q makes, but the actual letter Q. It is SO adorable and yet SO frustraiting at the same time.
After a few weeks, i'm starting to think that this is just a lost cause. Then, one morning we got there like 30 minutes early for some reason. Grace comes up to me and gives me a hug, and then i ask her how she is. Up until this point, I had always thought the language barrier was the reason fror her not really understanding the letters, but she answered me in PERFECT english! What!? So that morning i was determined to get the sounds right with her. Suprisingly, SHE DID GREAT! Only like two letters were Q that day!
It is so nice to finally see that what i am doing is making a difference to this sweet little girl. God is So Good.
