Thank you, Jupiter.

Teaching Marcus is a challenge, but yesterday was the kind of day that makes the work, the patience, and the occasional heartache all worth it. Marcus (I have changed his name for privacy) is my mentee at Mighty Writers, the after-school literacy program where I volunteer. When we started working together last year, he was a 5th grader reading and writing at an early 2nd grade level. Yesterday, we read an article in the New York Times together. Did he falter on some words? Of course. Did he catch the nuanced meanings of every sentence? Highly doubtful. Did he call someone Dr. Fiddlesticks because he had trouble reading "Fletcher"? Yes, he absolutely did. But he was engaged and persevered to the last line.

When his social studies homework had him get a news article and answer the 5 Ws about it, Marcus didn't think it was an assignment he could complete. With some encouragement and the promise that he would get to use a computer, he finally agreed to try. When I asked him what kind of topic he wanted to pick, he hemmed and hawed about it for a while, only giving me titles from his favorite picture book series. I kept going and finally he said "space". Well as luck would have it, a fireball crashed into Jupiter a couple weeks ago, an amateur astronomer caught it on video, and the NYT wrote an article about it.

Marcus watched the video on a loop for a bit before we started reading. And referred back to it a few more times as we went. He's a pretty empathetic little human being, and told me that he felt bad for Jupiter. Then he got worried that Earth might get hurt as a reaction to the impact on Jupiter. He didn't seem to believe me that it was way too far away. I asked him, "If a volcano erupts in Italy, do you end up with lava in your backyard?" He looked at me with a sly smile and responded, “How do you know what’s in my backyard?

Thank you, fireball. Thank you, Jupiter. Thank you, amateur astronomer. Thank you, journalist. Thank you, Marcus.