Empowered Voices – Curiosity Led Me Here and Connections Kept Me Here
By Karyn Hollman
A few years ago my life was in transition. With my children grown I adopted the role of my extended family caretaker and as a volunteer for numerous causes. Although fulfilling I felt a void. What was missing was a personal connection. Finding ETA was a gift.
The school readiness program was an opportunity for me to help a pre-K child and family in need. The program works to support/enrich a child through academic and social emotional activities and to assist families in accessing MCPS resources all in order to help this child achieve success in school. With a child development background and the support of ETA staff and experienced volunteers I was a bit nervous, but ready!
I was paired with an adorable, smart 4 year old boy, I’ll call M. He has huge expressive brown eyes and a charming smile. He was identified by his pre-K teacher as a child at risk as M’s language skills were extremely delayed and he was incredibly hard to understand. His family was completely on board. This match was a great fit for me as my youngest son had similar delays and I knew from experience this was in no way indicative of future success.
Program volunteers work with their child through a mix of zoom and in person meetings. Initially as I understood little of what he said, I felt the need to hold our sessions in person in order to incorporate nonverbal cues along with his verbalization. We met at the Gaithersburg Public Library weekly. I also encouraged his mother to speak to M’s teacher and counselor to have him evaluated and enrolled in speech therapy through MCPS. I was thrilled that she was so receptive and together we made sure his teacher followed through. He soon began in school sessions.
Our early sessions involved engaging him in ETA’s monthly books and the relevant discussion and activities outlined by the program prompts, a framework to help interpret his speech. While initially helpful due to the newness and excitement of our special materials he soon lost interest.
M no longer wanted to read with me so I adjusted my expectations, brought in more nonverbal activities such as play-doh and began allowing M to lead the way. Our sessions were repetitive but positive and relationship building. I began understanding his speech as did others around him. Sessions were enjoyable and through the different mediums I could see M’s academic growth. He was identifying numbers and most letters. Near the end of pre-K I was thrilled to see M write his entire name on his name tag for a group ETA activity, even though the letters were so large his name did not completely fit on the tag!
As M began kindergarten he became less engaged and less communicative with me. Sessions eventually ended in tears of frustration. He became inconsolable despite my patience, attempts at creativity, my endeavor to reflect his feelings and my weekly treats! At times I felt hopeless and worst of all upset by the stress this put on his mother. His frustration intolerance was reaching a peak. Unsurprisingly this behavior was being exhibited at home and each morning while transitioning to school. What M’s mother let me know was that though our sessions looked disastrous she was learning so much from my manner of interacting with M and able to utilize those tools at home.
As the school year progressed so did M! Throughout our time together I have loved watching his growth with problem solving skills in all areas. He began expressing pride in his ability to handle his disappointments and challenges. At one point he excitedly greeted me with his joy in having taken the bus to school without crying! He also delights in executing challenging tasks showing fabulous self confidence. He loves to tell me that he is smart. I love to hear it too! We were all thrilled…and so proud! M still has no interest in reading the book of the month but that is not any way indicative of his reading skill.
The next challenge was to transition to including zoom meetings while not abandoning in person sessions. I had attempted to zoom earlier on but M was angry and refused to engage. At this point I felt it was time to try again. M was still resistant and at most only willing to sit for a minute. I knew something unique was needed. On our next attempt I immediately introduced him to my dogs who were quite the charmers. We were able to move on to play matching games with a deck of cards imprinted with pictures and their written words. We each spread out all our cards and challenged each other to find its pair. It felt like a scavenger hunt!
M now begins sessions happily by sharing his school work with me and through his initiation working with me to advance the skill level of each activity. Throughout our time together M’s mother and I have reveled in his emotional growth, determination and problem solving skills and growth in math and reading skills. He is remarkable. At our most recent ETA group activity M once again filled in his name tag, this time with the smallest most perfect letters.