A Valuable Lesson on Empathy

I am slowly pursuing my Reading Specialist degree. My current class is Diagnosing and Correcting the Struggling Reader and thus far, it has been fascinating! I'm learning so much and adding many tools to my teacher-tool-box, but the last three weeks have been daunting. We began to learn an early literacy through grade twelve assessment where the training process begins with a 400+ page text book. I rely heavily on the combination of reading, reflecting, visual and kinesthetic learning processes in order to fully grasp a concept or skill. As a result, I'm finding this task overwhelming. After completing a less overwhelming section, my vigor was renewed and I felt encouraged! Yay! I actually finished it and understood it - the.first.time! I felt like a congratulatory pat on the back - or reward of some sort - was in order, instead I found myself learning empathy.

While my job is to help struggling readers struggle less, was I someone who really understood the struggle? 

In math, for sure (I remember crying through all of my math homework). But did I truly understand what it meant to be a struggling reader with zero desire to complete a text of any length? Could I really understand what it meant to struggle through a text and walk away feeling discouraged, and even unintelligent? 

Unfortunately, and fortunately, this textbook accomplished that for me. In our discussion board I wrote, 

This section was a refreshing read after the last few sections of reading that overwhelmed me. The process of assessing seems daunting, yet necessary. I was telling a friend that I’ve had to apply many of the strategies of a struggling reader to this textbook: rereading, rereading, rereading, check for comprehension, visualizing, asking questions, &etc. I am thankful for this struggle because it helped me understand the amount of work it takes to be a good reader; and how easy it is to become discouraged -  while also feeling dense. Like anyone else, if a book or text becomes difficult, time consuming, or uninteresting I lack the motivation and desire to finish it. That’s how I felt about this text, which lead to a light bulb moment for me as a reading teacher: this is how my struggling readers feel every time they attempt to read at all! Empathy is a valuable tool, just like the strategies given under each scenario in section 5!

I am thankful for this opportunity to struggle and I hope these feelings I experienced over the course of the last three weeks are remembered when I struggle understanding the feelings a struggling reader encounters on a daily basis.

I do believe that empathy is a key to success.