By Augustinian Volunteer Travis Vermulm

The Kindergarten Class does a goofy pose for their Christmas Party

JOHN

John is somewhat of a troublemaker. He frequently makes funny faces across the classroom to his classmates and works hard to distract whoever he can. I often give him a quick glare when I see him leaving his desk to wander aimlessly to another student’s area and take their focus off their work. Despite the stress John so often causes he is impossible not to love for several reasons, the biggest is his enormous grin constantly shining on his face.

One day John came in late to class and was behind on the math assignment of the day. I was assigned to help him catch up individually. This was the first time I had really worked one-on-one with John and I admit I was ready for the worst, ready to constantly be pulling his attention back to his paper and the task at hand.

The assignment was counting patterns. There were various shapes and pictures strewn across the page in different patterns. For example, one row might contain a series of cubes alternating size from big to small to small to big and so on. The students had to decide what the pattern rules were and name the last part of the pattern.

John dove in with an enthusiasm I had not seen before. With me sitting by his desk and pointing to each object he would energetically call out each item, “BIG! SMALL! SMALL! BIG!” Every time he said the size of the object his big toothy grin would flash up at me in the purest and most elated expression. He aced the assignment.

Throughout the day we still had some struggles with him wandering, making silly faces, and not staying on task, but as soon as I would make my way back to his desk he would sit down and start working, checking every so often to see if I was watching him do his work. John reminded me of yet another nugget of wisdom we can learn from children. Sometimes all a person wants, or needs, is to be noticed and acknowledged as an individual. In the future I will be making sure that I kneel besides John’s desk and check on his work. I know that he will give me a big grin when I get there.

NOTE: The names of the children were changed in this story.