Adventures in Learning to Read with Benjamin

Words that jumped and a dog that did too. Adventures in learning to read and write with a learning disability.

Hi Beloved humans, 

I was floored by your kindness last week. You showed up for me and my words with such deep love. 

Thank you.

Of course, I can’t say that your kindness got rid of all my anxiety but to rid myself of anxiety might be to rid the world of me entirely. Since we certainly don’t want that, I’ll continue making peace with my fear and showing up, anyways.

Be brave like a dog, Kate. Yes, let’s be brave and unabashed — just like a dog.

Before I dive in and share the adventure of Benjamin, my tutor’s Old English Sheepdog, I want to share a photo of what Benjamin looked like. Unfortunately, I was unable to unearth the real photos of me and him in the sea of unsorted photos that are “organized” (ha!) in my parents basement. So, all I can say is, thank goodness we’ve gone digital and please enjoy this fluffy stand-in to really set the scene…

What a breed, indeed.

So now, with love, dork, my solemn promise not to rhyme again and without further ado…

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Adventures in Learning to Read with Benjamin

Words jumped. No matter what I did, no matter how hard I tried, words were constantly jumping all over the page when I tried to read them. When I was a kid, reading felt like that party scene from Mrs. Doubtfire was trapped in my brain. You know the one – there was that crazy birthday party in the fancy house with all the farm animals on the furniture. The goats chewed the house plants. The sheep ate the cake and the kids screamed while the song raged on. 

Jump Around. Jump around. Jump up, jump up and get down! 

The distractions in that house were endless and that’s exactly how it felt in my brain when I tried to read. It felt like wrangling chaos. Except, unlike the movie, it wasn’t fun and there wasn’t cake, and no amount of yelling or scolding or time outs ever made it better.

In first grade, reading time was the time for me to be put in the hallway. I was below the reading level of my peers, but too intelligent to be put in the special education classroom. I was an ‘Other’ so each day, I’d be paired with a parent teacher to sound out the paper print out books the rest of my peers had graduated from months ago. 

By second grade, I was so behind in reading and writing that the school gave me an unofficial education assistant and by third grade, when the fire safety rules had caught up with one-on-ones in the hallway, my teachers cleared out a closet just for me. It was an old custodial closet. It had flickering fluorescent lights and one tiny little desk and chair tucked into the corner. I’d go in there to sound out my words. To write out my words out loud. To try so damn hard to make the words stop jumping. 

But, no additional help or change of circumstances ever made the words stop skipping around the page like a game of hopscotch and, by the end of reading or writing time, all I had ever learned was that the world was so embarrassed by me, so ashamed of me that they literally put me in the closet.

That year in third grade, it became clear that the assistance provided in school was not sufficient. My parents, determined to give me the best future I could hope for, began their quest to find the right tutor. After multiple incompatible pairings over the course of the next two years, they found Mr. and Mrs. S-G and, most importantly to me, the S-G’s Old English Sheepdog, Benjamin.

I started going weekly to the S-G’s in fifth grade. While most kids had playdates and soccer practice after school, I had tutoring. It was a whole family affair. My mom and little sister took me there each week. I remember those drives to the S-G’s house vividly. With a hurricane of anger welling up in my chest, I’d stare at the farmhouses out the window and daydream about being born into a house where raising cows was more important than knowing how to read or write. I hated the chatter of those car rides. My sister always talked about the adventure they had planned and I used to wish, over and over again, that I could switch places with her, or at the very least, have her brain for the afternoon because, even if it was three years younger than mine, it could already read and write far better.

Everything always improved when we arrived and Benjamin was let out of the door to greet us. He only loved me. He didn’t give my sister the time of day. The screen door would slam in his wake and he’d bound toward me, landing upon me in one epic pounce. He’d lick me silly with his drool soaked snoot and the anger at my broken brain would fade as he melted my frustration into a pile of cuddles. Benjamin was a young English Sheepdog when I started at the S-G’s and his energy levels were only rivaled by Trouble’s and my own. He was just like us: always yelled at for his enthusiastic and loud behavior and always and forever ‘too much.’ 

I loved his ‘too much.’ I think I actually needed it - a companion in the chaos, a friend for the frustration that awaited me inside. The scolding always started immediately upon our reunion. Some form of “C’mon, you two. Settle down. We know you can be better than this” always followed us around the lawn. I’d often pretend not to hear my mom or the S-G’s the first few times. I’d leap and skip and he’d bite my sleeves. But then, a few harsh words later, it was up the stairs to the small office on the right. It was dark in that office. Dark, cramped and full of books. Worst of all, Benjamin wasn’t allowed in it. So, to work we went. Try to read. Try to write. Try again, Kate. Try again. 

It was slow going those first few years.  Nothing could contain the jumping words. They didn’t stand in line the way they were supposed to and the letters always hopped to and fro. The whole thing made me seasick and want to scream. 

I never dared speak up about the jumping words. I didn’t want to be more broken than I already was so it took months of excruciating tutoring for the S-G’s to discover that the words and letters jumped and danced on the page for me. When they finally figured it out, I was prescribed two pieces of printer paper so I could only read one line at a time. It made it a bit better but it was still not perfect - and definitely not fast - or even close to the speed my peers were reading at. And then there was writing, but let’s not even go there today.

About two years in, Benjamin had a bad day. There was a thunderstorm, the kind that rips through the August sky and has rain falling in sheets seconds later. I had been staring at a paragraph for forty five minutes trying to make sense of it and I was not getting anywhere. I was holding back tears, trying so hard to understand the letters and the words and their accompanying graphics. I just wanted to get what the book was trying to tell me. I just wanted to get out of that office and be a kid again and then boom, one massive clap of thunder rolled above us. 

Benjamin busted through the door. Flying through the air, he jumped so enthusiastically upon me, he knocked me straight to the floor. In startled giggles, I clung to his fur. We collected ourselves and I straightened his ponytail, revealing his kind eyes beneath it. Leaning against him, my breathing slowed and I made eye contact with Mrs S-G, a rare occurrence for me. Cocking her head in mild apprehension, she handed me the biology text book I had been struggling with and my pieces of paper as I sat on the floor. I expected a punishment, a scolding, at least, and for him to be kicked out but instead, she nodded at me, ‘Okay Kate, now try again.’

Snuggled into Benjamin, I began again. With the pieces of paper revealing only one line of text, I slowly began to read. Incredibly, in one take, I made it through the whole paragraph, reading aloud each word without skipping another or flipping a batch of letters out of sequence. Afterwards, in a state of composure I never exhibited, I explained exactly what I had read to her pointing to the pictures on the page. It was a paragraph about a frog and its reproductive organs. See, here is where the spring pollywogs come from. Mrs. S-G smiled, and from there on out, that was how tutoring went: each session, I had Benjamin by my side.

It worked. Having Benjamin beside me soothed my anxiety and with less anxiety, I was actually able to use the skills taught to me to take on my learning disability. In a matter of weeks, I began to make progress at a speed I had never learned at before. One sentence for one snuggle. One paragraph for one lick. And always, always, always, Benjamin by my side.

I went to tutoring at the S-G’s through middle school. I learned to read there. I learned to write there. I caught up to my peers there and along the way, I also learned that practice and persistence pay off and that a growth mindset can change your world entirely. 

But, no matter how much better I got at reading and writing, no matter how much the hard work paid off and how much character I built, I still hated tutoring. I hated the rules of it. I hated how tenses didn’t honor my feelings and that adjectives and adverbs were different most of the time until they were the same. Above all, I hated how different it made me feel, how isolated and how I needed two pieces of printer paper - always, always, always - to stop the words from jumping and a snuggly dog to even make it possible in the first place.

I often wonder why I kept going – why no matter how many temper tantrums I threw each week, I’d still show up. My parents were certainly a factor and I’d like to think that I showed up for the chance to be tackled in the driveway by Benjamin or to put his long white and grey locks in a ponytail so you could actually see his beady black eyes. I’d like to think I showed up for the cookie we sometimes got to share if I read a whole page or wrote a whole paragraph. Yes, I’d definitely like to think that I showed up for those rare moments, sitting on the S-G’s sun porch where he’d sit on my feet and we’d share a popsicle, lick for lick, together, united in our brazen, bold and forever mischievous beings.

But, I don’t think that’s solely the case. I think I showed up for Benjamin and I showed up to prove my teachers and peers and parents and sisters all wrong. I think I showed up, week after week, to prove that even though I was different, even though I was an Other who needed a fluffy best friend to make her fear and pain tenable, I was worthy of self expression and writing my own story too. Yes, I think I showed up, week after week, because even though I hated words and all their forms back then, I knew that within them, I could find my voice, and one day, use that voice to finally set myself free.

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