Chapter 2

This chapter talks about what happens when Boo has run out of the classroom. He ends up running all the way to a kindergarten classroom and hides under a rug. By the time Torey finds him, the kindergarten class is coming back from recess and are wondering what he is doing. Torey calmly picks up Boo, now not struggling, and tells the students that he wanted to see what was under the rug. When she brings him back a student named Lori is waiting for her in the resource room. Lori is adopted, and was previously abused in her home beforehand. She is also a twin who did not receive as much nourishment/oxygen as her sister, so she has been left with learning disabilities. These disabilities aside, she is a very smart and caring girl.
It was really interesting to read about Lori, because your heart really breaks for her. Even though she is such bright and caring person, she just cannot learn very easily. Part of this is also attributed to the fact that when she was abused, her skull was fractured and a piece of bone was pushed into her brain. Something the author mentioned about Torey which crosses over to a lot of different cases with students was that, "For all intents and purposes, Lori was normal. Because of this, I noticed that people, myself included, tended to forget she was not. And sometimes we became angry with her for things over which she had no control." I really liked this quote because I think as an educator one has to realize that even the students who don't show their disabilities socially or in every day tasks, we still have to remember the things they do struggle with and try not to become frustrated when they cannot do things that other students can.
The chapter ended focusing on Boo again, who finally started to talk. He did not speak directly to anyone, or about anything relevant. What he DID do was recite word-for-word the morning weather. Torey called this "delayed echolalia". I thought this was very interesting because when I coached tennis this summer there was an autistic boy who would do something similar, except not delayed. He would repeat each direction I told him over and over. To end the chapter this way sent a very strong message about the quantity of information children with autism really can retain, which gives one hope when thinking about what they are capable of in a school setting.