I was working in my Alice is Wonderland copy work and decided to double that with asking the little girl in my house to read it out loud for me. This kills two birds with one stone. First, I get to hear and see Spanish at the same time, and she gets to practice reading.
A cool thing about Dominicans is that they don't have fear when it comes to reading things that are way beyond their reading level. I hand this girl a book that I know is bigger than any she has at school and she just sees it as taking it a word at a time. She was sounding out the words as we went along and I was pretty proud of her ability to sound out some of the pretty long words in this book. The cleaning lady tried to tell her to be quiet so she wouldn't "annoy" the American, but I let it be known that I wanted her there reading for me. She was almost finished with an entire page when my doña come out to criticize the way she was reading. "You have to read the words smooth. Read it before you say it!"
I tried to back the girl up and say the book and the words were bigger than she was used to, but my doña didn't want to hear that.
I mean, come on. This is coming from the house that won't give the girl four free minutes to answer three homework questions if the dishes aren't done or the cool old guy needs to pee. Now you want her to read with perfection? You've never even sat with her to work on reading I'm almost positive.
We are going to focus on the good though. You can walk out and criticize this kid and she still asks me for the book back to read the poems by Lewis Carroll.
Go little girl go!!!
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