I Think I Can, I Think I Can

As a teacher of the deaf/hard-of-hearing, one of my pet peeves is when my kids expect me to talk for them when they are perfectly able to talk for themselves...

Today, during a math lesson, one of my students had to go see our on-site audiologist because of a problem with his hearing aid. He missed out on the explanation part of the lesson, and when he got back, the rest of the kids were busily working on their assignment. So he sat down at his desk, looked at his assignment/paper and raised his hand for help. When I got to his desk, he pointed at his paper... Silently. Expectantly. I decided not to say anything and wait him out. It didn't work (turns out, I had used up all of my patience earlier in the morning). So I prompted him: "Use your words to ask me for help". Well, he looked at his paper, then looked up at me, then back down to his paper, and clearly he was struggling to put together a sentence in a question form. He finally said "I don't know how to do it". Being the stickler that I am, I said: "Can you ask me with a question?"

Then, he looked up at me through his white-blond hair with his big blue eyes surrounded by freckles and said: "Can you teach me?"