Just as I had assumed nothing could get worse, the teacher announced we were moving on to reading books. When the teacher made the announcement, I thought maybe this would be a good way for me to expand my reading skills. I had no clue the teacher meant we would be reading all by ourselves. Each student in my class was given a book once a week and told by our two teachers to read alone in the school hallway. Every time we were assigned to do this I would sit there in the long, dark hallway with a confused look on my face, trying to read and comprehend the text on my own. I was bothered at the fact that I could barely read the text with help and now I had to do it all by myself. My two teachers announced they were going to call each one of us back into the classroom to discuss with each of us individually what we just read. How was I supposed to do that? I didn’t know what I had just read.
Each week I just sat in the hallway with no clue about what I was reading. The teacher would come into the hallway to bring me back into the classroom. I would sit next to her desk, and I can still remember her voice saying to me “What was the book about?” With a bewildered look on my face I just sat their embarrassed, ashamed, and let down. She would get mad at me for being unable to explain to her what had happened in the book. I was so angry with myself for not being able to accomplish my goal of learning how to read that I didn’t want to pick up a book