Cardinal's Game

Monday night my friend Keith and I took a few of our students to the Cardinal's game. TFA is pretty good about getting us hooked up with free events, and it was definitely a great opportunity to get to know my students better...

First, I picked up Johnnie. Johnnie just turned 16 on Friday, but will probably not get his license for quite some time because he is what they call 'mildly retarded' and has a very difficult time communicating and taking tests. This kid is always smiling, and absolutely LOVES traffic lights and pedestrian signals! As we were driving he pointed out the lights that were long and short, and the pedestrian signals that he liked best. Johnnie lives with his mother, his grandmother (who is the secretary at our school), and his grandfather. The four of them live in a "2" bedroom apartment - Johnnie has a room about the size of a pantry, his grandparents share the bedroom, and his mother sleeps on the couch.

Johnnie and I then went on to pick up Bryan. Bryan lives with his mother, father, and younger siblings, but both of them are working two jobs to support their large family. When I picked Bryan up a neighbor was watching his siblings - she heard Bryan had an opportunity to go to his first baseball game and offered to help out! Bryan rarely speaks in class because he his concerned about his speech impediment, but he is always on task. He later confessed to me that he has a crush on one of the girls in our class, so we made sure to buy her teddy bear at the game.

We met up with the rest of the group and had an amazing time. The looks on their faces were priceless when we walked into the stadium! The Cardinals lost (ha ha), but the boys had a good time anyway, and they were excellent helpers the next day in class :)