Diamond

There is nothing quite like a challenge. The frantic energy it brings you, the unadulterated joy and fear of something new, the sense of fulfillment that rushes through your veins when you have worked through it. We all face a challenge or two in our life times, but never in my admittedly short one have I met the equals of the challenges that lie beyond Roosevelt Elementary School’s solid black doors. At Roosevelt each challenge comes in the form of a different child, and every one of those children has a unique way of viewing the world and therefore a unique way of learning. A good tutor has to find a different angle to teach each kid, and during 2004-2005 school year it was my job to be a good tutor. Carrying out my job in the after school Homework Clinic at Roosevelt I saw some of the toughest cases. I spent my afternoons with the kids who have learning disabilities and discipline problems. One of the more difficult kids to get through to was a little girl with a learning disability by the name of Diamond.

Diamond was a slightly chubby second grader with skin the color of milk chocolate, big doe brown eyes, and absolutely no affinity for math. In fact when she was by herself math seemed to her to be something akin to slamming ones head against a brick wall: frustrating painful and not terribly fruitful. The periods we passed together were always used trying to find someway the make the numbers real to her and to make the concepts she was trying to grasp slide into place. Meaningless floating numbers did nothing for her, nor did numbers on a paper. She needed something to attach them to whether it was a story or, as it was more often than not, a group of brightly colored blocks. Nothing was more satisfying to me then an eye widening of understanding from her after an hour spent running around the room identifying angles and sides and making them with our arms and bodies, or stacking dividing and removing blocks from piles. One afternoon as we were packing up Diamond slipped a small green piece of construction paper across the table at me and smiled brightly. Across the little scrap, written in slightly sloppy black marker, were the words “ Than You”. As I was not working on spelling with her I was able to fully appreciate it and I smiled back. It was heart felt and sweet and it was all the conformation I needed on what I wanted to do with my life.

Diamond taught me something that day. She taught me that the things I wanted forever were the small joys of helping someone else learn: the challenge and the smile at the end. She taught me that hard work is necessary and appreciated. She taught me that I wanted to use my time on earth to cross out some of the items that lie on the Cosmic To-Do list instead of create new ones. In the end it turned out that she taught me a lot more than I taught her.