Chapter 24

Lori has finally come back to school, and Torey has made some drastic and not-quite-approved changes. She is no longer going to be focusing on teaching Lori reading, writing, or spelling. Instead she rips all of the reading materials for Lori apart and throws them in the garbage, to show Lori how serious she was about other skills being just as important if not more than reading. Lori becomes somewhat upset because she DOES want to learn to read, and doesn't want Torey to give up on her. Torey tells her that people are like hyacinth bulbs (the ones they planted earlier in the year). They need to sit and grow roots first, before blooming. She tells Lori that we can't always see the roots growing, but they're growing just the same. Torey says that she is not giving up, and that they will try to help her read, but for now they are going to focus on other things so that Lori can create roots all the while.

I think that this is a good strategy. Since there seems to be no improvement with the reading and Lori already doesn't want to come to school, I think that making her as comfortable as possible in school and helping her to learn other skills is still being productive. I just hope that along the line Torey or someone else was able to help reading 'click' for Lori.

Claudia is still a concern for Torey, and she realizes that she is going to have to be the only resource Claudia has involving pregnancy questions, or questions about anything else for that matter. When Claudia finds a Cosmopolitan magazine, she starts asking Torey some interesting questions about one of the articles. To her surprise, sex is supposed to feel good. Something that really made me think was when Claudia said, "You're supposed to WANT to have sex? Wow, I sure never knew that. I thought it was just something you did because you had to, to get a guy to like you and not leave you for somebody else. I sure didn't know you were supposed to feel good doing it." (pg. 243).  It made me sad to think that there are girls who think that they need to do certain things in order to keep boys happy. I've seen examples way too many times, and although there has been more sex education I feel that there needs to be more education about the emotional side of things.