Stumped

I miss my third graders. I know how good I had it when I was their teacher. They were a great group of kids and I got to know them really well. I could have a conversation with any one of them, asking questions about things like hamsters, or sisters, or soccer, or whatever else was in their third-grade world.

Now that I'm teaching summer school, I know that I won't have the same relationship with these kids in my class. It's really not possible in 3 1/2 weeks to build relationships with them. I only see them for an hour and half each day. And all of that time is jammed with reading and learning.
I almost feel like it's a waste of time. I know that these kids are getting some learning that normally wouldn't be happening at home. The possibility of having "summer slide" is lessened by what we're doing together. But I really feel that getting kids to be engaged and learn is so much dependent on relationships. If they know you and trust you, they're likely to want to learn from you.

There's one little girl in the group who is going into fourth grade. She is reading at about a first-grade reading level. After working with her one on one, I said to her, "Great reading! You are a great reader!" She looked at me and said, "I'm not a reader." I looked at her in disbelief and said, "Yes, you are. You just read these words to me." She sat for a minute formulating her thoughts and said, "I don't want to read. I don't want to learn." After going back and forth with her, I realized that it was a losing battle. Her stubbornness won out.

I've been thinking about her all weekend. (That's one of the side effects of being a teacher; you can't leave work at school when you leave. You're constantly thinking about it.) I'm stumped. I've never worked with a kid who came out and said that he or she didn't want to read, didn't want to learn. I have made it my mission to figure out how to get through to her and help her see that reading and learning is fun. I don't know if there's enough time, but I'm going to try.