Unlocking the Brilliant Corners

B loves bugs. I met him during the first week of school as I conducted the standard assessment of how many words he could read per minute from a second-grade story. After the assessment, I gave him the customary caterpillar sticker to put on his shirt to show everyone that he was going to emerge as a great reader during his second-grade year.

You'd have thought that I'd had given him a piece of gold. "Oooh, I love bugs," he marveled as I handed him the sticker. "I have seen caterpillars around the trees at my apartment. They spin a chrysalis and turn into butterflies,” he continued. And so a friendship began around the pyrrharctia isabella, the armadillidum vulgar and other bugs that make up the most diverse group of animals on the planet.

This interaction told me some crucial things about B. It told me he’s a smart kid, and it also told me that keeping him engaged in school would likely include bugs.

I later learned that B and his family moved here from Mexico when he was a baby. His mom and dad speak only Spanish at home. He speaks English at school.

While his speech was at grade level, two academic assessments told me that B’s reading in English was severely deficient. He needed help. He is a now daily participant in the English as a Second Language program at our school, and he has become one of the students in my reading intervention program.

But to help B become the best student possible, I can’t do it alone. My school social worker and my ESL teacher friend are part of the family of nurturers—as are B’s parents.

As I look at B through my teacher eyes, I see more than his academic deficiencies. I see the brilliant corner in his mind, the corner that holds an amazing amount of knowledge about caterpillars and roly poly bugs.

After my first meeting with B, I visited our ESL teacher. We decided to give him a book, The Icky Bug Alphabet Book by Jerry Pallotta. This would be our starting point on the road to helping B become a reader.

Next, I visited our school social worker. We decided to help B’s dad and mom get involved in our school’s parent-involvement program. They realized that they could help brainstorm ways to educate their children, even help their children find the motivation to do homework.

B’s homeroom teacher and I looked at ways to accommodate his reading and writing deficiencies by shortening his homework assignments and linking them to his love for bugs as best we could. He loved choosing five spelling words and linking them to the insect world by writing five related sentences.

Finally, B became a student in my Response To Intervention class, where I work with him every day on phonemic awareness, phonics skills, high-frequency word knowledge and comprehension skills.

B can sit down with me now and read 50 word stories without missing a word. His fluency is improving, too. He is on the way to becoming a great reader. And it all began with bugs.

At the end of class one day, I walked beside him on the way back to his homeroom. I asked if he had ever heard of an entomologist. He shook his head no. I explained that an entomologist is a scientist who studies bugs. “I think you could become a great bug scientist,” I said. The expression on his face reminded me of that first day we met when I gave him the caterpillar sticker. You'd have thought I'd given him another piece of gold. And, you know, I think I did. It’s amazing what kids can do when we focus on their strengths.

Barton is an elementary school teacher in South Carolina.