A story about a child that touched my heart!

I had a child in my class one year that was very shy and cried all the time. She seemed to never be happy and refused to play with anyone. I have a very tender heart and I take my job very serious. I made it a personal goal to help the child adjust to the class and hopefully enjoy school one day. Some how this resulted with the little girl getting really attached to me. She was Hispanic and spoke very little English but knew enough to let me know when she needed something. I had a really hard time finding ways to help her. I am normally really good at this so it was very challenging for me. I just couldn't figure out what I could do to help her. In the middle of the year her mother came into the class one day and asked to speak to me. She told me that her daughter has always had a really hard time opening up and had expressed her concerns about how she could help. She said she had noticed a really big difference in her this school year. She caught her playing school and pretending to be Ms. Ellis was especially funny. She said because she takes her doll by the hand and says it's going to be okay let me show you a game I know. Then she would sit down at the table and say, " what color is this? Okay find me Blue... and so on. Good job! Way to go! I am so proud of you! Can you show me another one?" My heart was so touched because to this point I thought I wasn't getting anything thru to her. She barely talked to me and hardly every told me the color or shape until I told her the name of it first. So the next day when we were in class I went over to play with her. She was playing in the sand box and I told her that I had heard that she liked playing school at home. She looked really surprised and shook her head yes. I told her we could play school at school to. We just had to use our imagination. She looked really surprised so I explained to her how we could use our imagination. Needless to say somehow that opened her up to a whole new world. We would pretend school and the other children would come over and want to play too. She quickly got involved with helping the other children to understand how we pretend school at school. She got very involved with the other children. I told her everyday how proud I was of her. She would give me a big thumbs up at me and smile. Memories like these are the reason I love to teach.