Patience
Written by: Ellen Kennedy, Language Arts Teacher, Bartlett High School
Larry was very suspicious of the CITC program (then called TREE—Together Reaching Educational Excellence) when we first opened at Bartlett in 2001. No one had ever shown him any particular attention at school as he remembered it. Why him? Why Native kids? Why now? The first semester he came late almost every day. Our Family Advocate worked with his mom and we worked with him to show him we were on his side.
The next spring he was a member of a Research Writing class, and he was doing a paper on modifications to stock cars to make them into street racers. One morning he came over with a folder of writing and pictures. “I’d like to show you this,” he said, sitting down beside me.
For the next twenty minutes, he showed me picture after picture as he talked enthusiastically about what he had discovered about changing regular cars into racers. When he was finished, I told him I was really proud that he had found so much and was doing so well. He smiled and walked away.
Then it hit me! He was sharing with me—unasked!
This is how I remember being rewarded for patience with my students at Bartlett in 2002.
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