A Feel Good Story

Before I get into my feel good story, I must say I've been a complete slacker lately as far as blogging goes. I've been reading a bunch of cool stuff and commenting a little, but haven't actually written anything. I'm going to try and change that and write more frequently.

On to the story. In my school we have a fifth grader with a special ed label of TBI - if you aren't aware of that, it's Traumatic Brain Injury. When this boy was somewhere around 5, he was riding without a seatbelt in his drunk uncle's car on the freeway and somehow fell out of the car. He was then run over by another vehicle. It's pretty amazing he's alive and functioning rather normally. Anyway, he has some issues working in the regular education class and is pulled out for most academic work. His attitude isn't always the greatest and he's not always respectful to others. When his class would come in the library for their weekly time with me, he was always interested in checking out the books to his classmates. At the time, I let him because it kept him out of trouble. He figured out the checkout system rather quickly and kind of took over when he came in. With this working well and keeping him out of trouble, I decided to ask his Special Ed teachers if he could come down when I have kindergarten and first grade students and run the checkout computers. We set this up as a reward for decent behavior with him. He would come in for an hour twice a week to run the computer while I was helping the little students find books. Well, this worked wonders. He quickly learned the names of the younger students and did a great job with them while I was providing "crowd control." He was often a problem everywhere else throughout the day except when he was with me. I ranted and raved about his success and other teachers along with the principal would pop in to see if I was serious. We have since decided to have him come in an hour everyday, to not only help the younger students during checkout, but also help those students in the computer lab. It's been fantastic for me and more importantly for him. We have recently started working on academic work during the down time to make sure he's not losing out. In addition, he has even read stories to the younger students. They love having him there, and so do I.