What's an Angel?

I've been working at an elementary school in Seattle with the Children's Literacy Project (CLP), which sends tutors to schools to work with kids. I'm a tutor, and I'll be posting exerpts from my CLP journal.


After lunch the kids came back and I worked on lists of vocabulary with them. Most of them could read the words pretty well, although I had to remind them to sound out a word here or there. I drilled a few kids on these lists before discovering that some of them didn’t know what the words they were reading actually meant. After that I had them read the list and then define each word. I explained words to every kid save one. She was a tiny thing with beautiful brown eyes and a haircut that reminded me of Ramona, a character in a book by Beverly Cleary I’d read over and over when I was this girl’s age. Her dark bangs looked to have been recently cut jaggedly across her forehead. She sat down and read each of the words precisely, and then gave me a series of detailed definitions and examples for each word on the list. She told me the word "moist" meant "a type of of weather, like precipitation" and pronounced each syllable of precipitation so matter-of-factly that I had to grin.The list had both “angle” and “angel” in it, which every child thus far had confused. She breezed right through it. When we reached “angel” again for definitions, she had to think for a moment.


“An angel is… it’s…” she faltered, then continued. “An angel is someone with spirit.”

Just before a correction jumped out of my mouth I stopped myself, unable to say anything. Finally I said,

“Right, that’s right. Next one?” and we continued on. Her words stuck with me for the rest of the day. I don't know about you, but I can't think of anyone I know whom I would describe as an Angel without saying that they have spirit as well.