5 for 1 Project: Days 2 and 3 with TA

Investing into a child is sometimes like buying a lottery ticket for the year 2030. Only time will prove whether all that was spent was worth it. (And in the end, the time you spend helping a kid is never wasted.)

So the past two days I have been working hard to instill some love and care into my buddy I call TA. Yesterday we had a the all too common missing homework. Do you check your child's homework for completeness and double check that it makes it back into his back pack? THANK YOU! For kids like TA, that extra help towards responsibility is amiss. So here we were, sitting inside at afternoon recess making up the missing work. I could tell it was killing him. It was Friday, the weather here in PA had finally broken, and little legs were desiring a run. After I watched him work hard at the missing work for a few minutes, I called over to him. "Go outside and play," I told him. As he jumped up and started to race out, I stopped him quick. "You know I really like having you in my class, right?" His face lit up, he smiled, and said, "Thanks Mr. Snyder." Then out the door he went.

I have been doing as many of the 30 Goals Challenge (#30goals) as I have time for. What a great project Shelly Terrell has going over there. I really seemed to connect with the latest goal, #10, Plant A Seed of Belief. We must believe as teachers that all kids can be reached. Randy Pausch talks about this in his amazing book, The Last Lecture. He describes how we must find things that kids think they cannot do, let them work at it until they discover they in fact can, and then repeat the process. For kids like TA, and many kids we cross paths with, they have never had anyone believe in them. We must be the catalyst, and build belief in kids through simple tasks that exalt their abilities. As Shelly talked about in her podcast, we simply sow seeds in faith that mountains can still be moved.