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Learning From Elijah

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: March 25, 2009

I owe a lot to Elijah. The 17-year-old high school dropout came to the center where I tutor to try and earn his GED. Quiet, respectful and struggling, he was my student and we worked together on reading comprehension.

Outwardly, he looks like what I had come to think of as the rebellious teenager. Long hair trails down his back and baggy jeans completely engulf his youthful frame. I had been told a single mother was raising him and he was refusing to go to school.

But there was something special about Elijah: a calm and a focus that belied his academic history.

After our first tutoring session, I noticed a poem pinned to the classroom bulletin board under the headline "Kudos to Elijah-published poet!" At age 13, Elijah had become an uncle and wrote a poem to welcome his new nephew into the world. A lovely and moving piece, it was beautifully written and published in The International Library of Poetry.

Next time we worked together, I asked him about his writing and shared with him my own history as a writer. He spoke, then listened quietly. We talked about the kinds of things poets write about. Before he left the center that day, he presented me with a poem he had just written about his dream for a beautiful and peaceful world.

That was when he taught me something that has changed my thinking about many things in life. I realized that contrary to his characterization by society as a "student at risk," Elijah is a "student at promise." He has, I think, the potential to be a gifted writer.

I typed up the poems he shared with me and put them into a white notebook along with a letter of encouragement to keep writing. He appreciated the present, but I appreciate his gift to me even more.

As a student at promise, he taught me to look for the positive in what may appear to be a negative situation whenever I can. I am now able to think of aging as being at promise of health instead of being at risk of a heart attack. It's a gift I will cherish.

There is something especially soothing about searching for the positive and finding it. Meeting and working with Elijah was like putting on a better pair of glasses.

Signs that I couldn't read before are clearer now, and I resolve to seek the promise rather than the risk in as many situations as I can.

Judy Kramer can be reached by e-mail at JudyandOz@tampabay.rr.com.

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