Mr. Shepherd opened the door for Max. Every year Max and one of Max's teachers would come into this room and talk about things that really didn't make much sense. But this year Mr. Shepherd was there and he always had a way of making things make sense for Max.
Mr. Shepherd was a stout, hairy man who always seemed to walk as if he were walking on hot coals. He always held a cane in his hand to aid in his walking. When Max first met him, he thought the teacher was a joke. But Mr. Shepherd was the best thing that had happened to him in a long time. Ever since he began teaching Max, his grades improved dramatically. Normally, the boy had gotten everything below a C, never above it, but with the help of Mr. Shepherd's class, Max started getting B's and C's with the occasional A.
The class was made up of only three other students. All of which had one problem or another. Max's problem was his ADHD-C and Dyslexia, something which greatly frustrated him. Max also seemed to always be confused about what was going on. And when he was confused he stopped paying attention. This lead him to have major gaps in his knowledge base. Normal things that were common knowledge to most students were, foreign concepts to Max.
Just the other day he learned that Paris, Texas and Paris, France were two totally different places, something which really confused him. Were there two of everyplace? Was there another Waverly Place somewhere? Most concepts confused him in some way. That was only because no one ever bothered to explain them to him; they would only shake their heads. It made Max think of all the other things he knew and wondered if they were also wrong.
That was the good thing about Mr. Shepherd; he knew how to explain things that Max just didn't get. Like that some people name places after other places. "Which is stupid," Max personally thought. Mr. Shepherd agreed with him on that statement.
"Howdy Hombres! Let's get this powwow going," Mr. Larritate said as he walked in the room.
"Sorry Mr. Larritate, We need to wait for Max's parents." Mr. Shepherd said as he opened a file in front of him. Max saw that the file had his name on it as well as a bunch of other letters, but due to Max's dyslexia, he couldn't decipher it.
About 10 min later Mr. and Mrs. Russo arrived and apologized for being so late. "We are so sorry! You won't believe how hard it was to catch a cab here," Mrs. Russo said as she flipped her hair innocently.
"It's quite alright . Let's get started," Mr. Shepherd said grumpily. That was one of the things Max liked about Mr. Shepherd he was always on time and held order over everything in his class. Max liked it when everything was not chaotic. Chaos had a way of making his confusion worse.
And speaking of confusion the meeting seemed to have the same words as the meeting they had last year with Mrs Tolbert; words like "functional performance"and "Supplementary aids", he had heard these words before but had a hard time seeing how they applied to him. Then Mr. Shepherd made a clear statement.
"Max's grades have improved as well as his overall learning style," Well maybe not all the words, what the heck was learning style? "I would hate Max to lose his momentum over the summer. So I took the liberty of filling out applications for Max to a summer camp tailored to children like him." Mr. Shepherd paused and looked over his spectacles at the Russo's daring them to object. "This is something I don't do for many of my students. But Max is a special kid and he deserves to have some advantage,". Again he paused and waited for any objections. "You will be glad to hear that Max was granted a full scholarship. The Camp was impressed with his progress and they believe that he would flourish with the camps help."
Max normally wouldn't want to go to a camp. But last summer he was stuck with his parents the entire summer, while his siblings went to WizTech. It would have to be more fun than hanging out with his mom and dad all summer. Most of his friends went to camps during the summer. The only friend he had that didn't was Alfred. But Alfred wasn't his friend anymore. His supposed friend said some mean things about him, and now Max didn't want to think about him ever again.
"A camp sounds awesome!" Max yelled out shocking most of the adults in the room. "But I don't want to wear a suit the whole summer." Max said pensively. This comment was met with confused stares from his parents and Mr. Larritate.
But Mr. Shepherd laughed, "That is not what 'Tailor made' means. It means the camp is made for kids like you. I promise they let you were t-shirts and shorts." Max smiled feeling less confused. Mr. Shepherd did have a way of making everything make sense.