Eye contact is the least of her problems. She walks into my home, her whole body tilted away from me in such obvious wariness that I want to cry, to close the door behind her and her issues,
A n 11th grader who wouldn’t look me in the eye?
“She’s lacking some social skills” the special-ed coordinator says when she first calls me about Sara. “But she’s not stupid. She needs help completing her English Language studies so she can get a diploma. Would you work with her one-one-one?”
Sara had been in the very first class I’d taught when I was just out of seminary. She was younger then and her issues weren’t as pronounced. But I’d soon learned what a troublemaker she was and what an angel she could be if left to her own devices — to doodle her way through the lessons with markers and crayons. So I’d let her be. In my classes she’d created pictures and drawings and I blessed her artistic inclination without making much effort to engage her.
Five years have passed since then and to be told that Sara is struggling brings my niggling guilt to the fore. I take on the job.
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