Chapter 4

Chapter 4 focused a lot on Lori again, and delved further into her back story. Now Lori is in Torey's classroom half-days because of conflicts with her classroom teacher so Torey is able to meet with Lori's father on a more regular basis and learn more about her history. Mr. Sjokheim (Lori's adoptive father) has had a very sad past. He and his wife had a child, who due to a freak accident had such severe brain damage that she was on life support for months, and eventually died. When he and his wife decided to move somewhere new and start over, they had Lori and Libby, the twins, as foster children. They decided to adopt the twins, and soon after Mrs. Sjokheim became ill with cancer. She died a year after the twins had been adopted. He also talked about how Lori was born prematurely and how this may have somewhat affected her learning, but that she also had lesions in her skull from abuse in her previous home.

This chapter really brought out thoughts about not only dealing with children from abusive situations but those situations in general. It is so sad to think about how unstable one really has to be in order to even think about abusing someone else, let alone a small child. Thinking about it really makes me sick, and I hope as a future educator I can help those who have been abused see the light, and to educate everyone on all kinds of abuse.

A quote I really liked from this chapter was at the very end, because it really summed up nicely what I have thought about children coming from unfortunate circumstances who have a lot of difficulties. Torey said:

"I could not imagine what it must be like to be seven and to have known failure half my life, to get up every morning and come spend six hours in a place where try as I might, I could never really succeed. And by law Lori had at least seven more years ahead of her of this torture, as many years left as she lived. Men murdered and received shorter prison terms than that. All Lori had done was to be born into the wrong family."

As a future teacher, it is my hope that I can make school a safe and positive environment for all of my students. I understand that school is not necessarily always FUN for everyone, but I want to do my best to help students who struggle to not feel like they are being punished.