Why help little kids? What appeal does that have on anybody? Most will say because it’s fun, or they need it. Others will say because it feels right. For me, it’s family related. I’m more than happy to help.
I’m not shy when it comes to admitting I am probably one the brains of my family. Most of the adults barely made it through school, others not at all. I excel pretty well, however a bunch of the younger children need a boost. My younger brother Alan has always struggled with school. He has some type of learning disability; it took him many years to get to the level he is at now. Alan is a ninth grader this year, but only reads at a fourth grader’s level. He also can only do basic mathematics.
Many times he asks me for help on homework, specifically science and history classes. Science makes more sense to him, the words aren’t as hard and everything fits together without much of a hitch. History though, is loaded with terms and important dates and big tests with essays. History is not any easy class for anybody unless you have a really great memory.
One day he came home with this immensely problematic assignment. Even in my eyes, I knew it was a long stretch. I am a huge history buff and still it scared me. He had to do this type of puzzle with letters jumbled up of important names. Some were very easy and others were pretty scary. We didn’t have a word bank, we had to hunt through the book to find names and hope the names fit. There was probably like 25 or so names and like oh, 7 jumbles, so we defiantly had our work cut out for us.
We got through the jumbles by him telling me the letters while I looked. I wrote down the pages and paragraph number the name was in, then I turned the book back to him so he could look. That way I could supervise Alan as he tried to solve his puzzle. Sort of like a teacher and a student.
I’ve taught Alan many little tricks to get through seemingly tough homework. Things like finding keywords and dates, also looking at paragraph titles and deciding if what you’re looking for fits into that area. Finishing that jumble further improved him looking for answers. It feels really good to be the one that knows what to do, rather than the one that needs help. That’s why helping kids is so important. If nobody had helped them, nobody would have helped you and you would not be helping others.
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