A bit of good news

Tanner's dyslexia makes some things difficult for him, particularly reading, writing, and spelling. He has some real struggles with those things, and I sometimes find myself getting discouraged as I try to help him deal with some of those challenges when he's got a tough writing assignment.

But he pulled off something great the other day, and this may hint at where his future lies. His English class assigns a series of "English challenges," things like writing a poem or a paper about something or other. A couple of the challenges are oral. The kids are required to do at least one of the oral challenges.

Tanner's never had trouble getting up in front of a group. He's given several talks in church. He gets up there with just a couple of notes and says what he wants to say. For his oral English challenge, he decided to talk about why he loves cars. Stace and I gave him a couple of pointers and sent him off to work on his speech. He scribbled down a couple of talking points, rehearsed it in his head a few times, and gave us a dry run while we were in Barcelona. It was so-so. We spent ten minutes or so giving him more suggestions and sent him off to practice some more.

He gave his speech in class on Wednesday, and it was fantastic. His teacher said it was the best speech he's heard in four years of teaching. He said that Tanner could convince someone to buy garbage and it wouldn't be until later that they'd wonder why they had bought garbage. Students from later English classes that day told Tanner that the teacher was still talking about Tanner's speech from that morning. I asked Tanner if he'd needed to use his notes during the speech, and he said that he didn't use them; he just remembered all of his points and said what he wanted to say. He loves being up there in front of the crowd and doesn't get at all rattled.

That ability can get a person pretty far in life. Maybe there's still hope for the kid.