Only Hope

So I lay my head back down,
And I lift my hands and pray to be only yours,
I pray, to be only your...
I know now, you're my only hope.

The kids at the school yesterday must have realized how "off" I was, because when I was working with them they all managed to test me! We were working on a voice threading project with the first and second graders, which involved them being assigned a letter of the alphabet. They chose something in our city which starts with that letter (U is for University!) and drew a picture for it. We scanned the pictures into a photostory program, and had each student write a short paragraph about their picture, about what they drew. Then we recorded each of them reading their paragraph into the microphone and threaded them together so that the pictures went through a slideshow, and the audio played when the child's picture came up on the screen. It was an incredible idea, but a couple of them are still really struggling with reading, and so I was taking them aside to have them practice for me. One of them, a girl with very mild fetal alcohol syndrome if I remember correctly, read it to me once and I had to help her on every second word. I asked her to repeat it a second time and she looked at me like I was asking her to break her own finger. "Did SHE have to read it again?!" Pointing at the girl who went before her. "Uhmmmm? Yeah....sure, she did. Yes. Just read it." So she reads it (begrudgingly) kind of shakily, needing prompting again. So thinking quickly, I grab a pencil which is the same size and shape of the microphone we're using, and I tell her to pretend the pencil is the mic and this is it, she's being recorded now! Her eyes lit up and I knew I'd sparked her attention, and she grabs the pencil and almost starts, and then she paused....and I could see the thought process in her head...."....Did she do it..?" she asked me in a kind of small and suspicious voice. I was so taken aback that I just stared at her with an "uuuhhhhhh......." She put the pencil down and decided to do it without. She's very much a follower, and she realized it might not be cool to pretend. At least she tried again. >.>

Another girl was in the library drawing her picture and asked me for help. So I went over there and she was doing F for Farms or Farmers or something. There were some weird shapes that I knew were supposed to be animals, and I immediately started trying to figure out what they were. Then she proceeds to tell me how bad her picture was, and how you can't tell what anything is.

Eep. I could see this taking a turn for the worst.

So she looks at me with some sort of evil suspicion as I tried to wave away her worries, telling her she's silly, it's not bad, she just needs to finish colouring it.

"But you can't even tell what the animals are! Guess what they are, just guess."

That like, my worst fear. Guessing the pictures in kids' drawing. It's terrible. So I look up at her with panic and glance around, making excuses that I'm "not very good at guessing", but she just stared at me! So I told her I'd try. I definitely got the horse before she'd even asked, so I slowly told her it was a horse while trying to guess the other ones. I got them right, but seriously? She knew. She's evil. And adorable. I won't hold a grudge. I'll just be careful around that one--an innocent act, but she's clever!

I've taken forever to write this post because I've been secretly watching A Walk to Remember at the same time--and it's at the incredibly sad and beautiful almost-ending, so I have to go. And cry a little. And then study! Can't forget to study. My exams start on Friday.

<3 Love, Caitlin