Beau

Beau

By Rev. Lonnie C. Crowe

                A serendipitous reward of my teaching career has been the opportunity to teach remedial English.  The eagerness to learn and outspoken honesty of those students is often absent in the grade mongers.  The greatest moments come when the students gain enough self esteem to accept themselves and one another.

                Beau taught us some good lessons on self-acceptance.  He was unforgettable, large, uncouth, nearly illiterate and happy to be in school.  The desire of my teacher’s heart was for Beau to read.  It seemed that previous teachers had instilled in him all the necessary decoding skills.  Although I had no academic expertise in teaching reading, I felt that Beau needed only an opportunity to practice those skills.  He had been mainstreamed from a special education class where the teacher had read to him, but had given him little or no chance to read for himself.  

                Beau deserved literacy, and I was determined that he achieve it.  First, I felt, he needed to see an adult enjoying the printed page.  I become Beau’s role model.  I was fortunate that he was in both my remedial English and in my study hall.  The study hall met in the library where the students sat around tables in an atmosphere more informal than that of a regular classroom.  Because of the informality, some students occasionally displayed difficulty keeping on task.  Beau, a stickler for protocol, quickly squelched any chattering.  Soon we all sat quietly doing our work so we would not antagonize Beau.  The quiet time was perfect for Beau to practice his reading skills.  

                As I became his reading role-model, I shared Beau’s table.  Giving him the western classic Thunderhead by Mary O’Hara, I said, “Beau, every day during this hour, you and I are going to read.  While you silently read Thunderhead, I will silently read a book of my choice.”

                Beau accepted the assignment.  Because he liked school, he was always willing to try.  He read, and I read and watched Beau read.  On a good day, Beau could read a page in ten or fifteen minutes.  Most days were not that good.  

                School had started in August.  The temperature was nearly one hundred degrees every afternoon.  The building had no air conditioning.  As Beau read, laboriously mouthing every word, pausing often to ask me for a pronunciation or a definition, sweat dampened his face and his shirt.  He smudged the pages and the table top.  I had had no idea that reading could be such hard work.  My sympathies grew as Beau struggled and sweat.  After eight days, Beau was on page eighteen.  I could no longer watch the struggle.  I repented.  I would read that book to him.  No one should have to struggle that hard.

                Beau saved me.  As if he sensed my uneasiness, he looked up from Thunderhead, smiled and announced, “This here is the best book I ever read.”

                We were in a small school, and, soon, the entire school became involved in Beau’s reading.  When he confronted an unfamiliar word, he grabbed the nearest person and demanded an answer.  Timid freshmen shook when Beau collared them.  “What’s this here word?  What does it mean?”

                Reading at least forty minutes a day, Beau spent the entire first quarter reading Thunderhead. We all celebrated when he finished.  

                He had started Wilson Rawls’ Where the Red Fern Grows when a snowstorm stranded him at a relative’s home for several days after Thanksgiving vacation.  When he returned, Beau proudly announced, “I finished reading that dog book.  I ‘bout cried when they died.”

                I ‘bout cried to learn that he had taken a book with him on vacation.  To think that he had read it was overwhelming.  

                Beau needed another book.  Our local rural Wyoming school system had a unique arrangement.  The elementary and high schools were in the same town.  The middle school was ten miles to the west.  Because he had enjoyed Red Fern so much, I suggested that Beau read Old Yeller by Fred Gipson.  A copy was not on the shelf of the high school library.  I knew the elementary library, just across the parking lot had a copy.  However, I did not want to embarrass Beau by giving him a book from the “little kid’s library.” 

                “Beau, I’m sure the middle school has a copy of Old Yeller, “I said.  “I’ll call them.  We can have it here in the morning.”

                “If I kin read that book, them little kids kin read it.  It’s probably in the grade school library.  I’ll go get it.”

                The elementary library was a veritable candy store of literature for Beau.  He, unabashedly, read book after book—Old Yeller, the Black Stallion series, Garfield comics and the ultimate Smoky, the Cow Horse by Will James.

                The other students were supportive.  “Hey, Beau, what are you reading?”  “How many books have you read, Beau?”

                As Beau learned to read, he learned to write as well.  At first he wrote lists of seemingly disconnected ideas.  Then rudimentary sentences came forth.  Our culminating writing activity that year was a four chapter autobiography.   I encouraged the students by telling them that each person is important enough to be the subject of a piece of writing, that each student has interesting stories to tell and that the autobiography would provide a piece of family history.

                It was then spring.  The weather was warm again.   Beau toiled, sweat and left smudges on the pages and the desk top.  But Beau wrote.  He slowly produced page after page.  He wrote about the pain when his parents divorced.  He wrote about his pet cow that he and the other children used to saddle and ride.  He wrote about school and how much he loved football.

                When the time for editing finally came, I told the class that their work was worthy of correct grammar, punctuation and spelling, that each red mark signaled that the work deserved the best in mechanics.

                Beau, however, needed no encouragement.  He knew his story was good.  When he received his draft, he squirmed in his chair, pushed up his sleeves, wiped the sweat from his brow and set to work.  When I walked by him, he nearly crushed my wrist in a sticky grip and demanded, “Hey, Teacher, how do you spell capital F?”