One Child is a book about a violent, out of control six year old girl named Sheila who has been raised in a world of abuse, hostility, and anger, and how one brilliant teacher named Torey reached out to her. Sheila was abandoned by her mother when she was four, and she lives with her father who is an alcoholic who constantly abuses and torments her. There are many issues I've learned in the text book, that I read about in One Child and learned more from the experiences both Shelia and Torey faced. Topics I read in the book included child abuse, Peer Relations, neglectful parenting, developmental consequences of abuse, and poverty.
             Most of One Child takes place in Torey's classroom better known as the "garbage class." Her classroom was for the kids who defied classification. Her class was the last stop before institution. One Child is directly focused on one particular child. Shelia, who burned a little boy in November of that year, was put in Torey's class because there were no openings at the state hospital and her classroom was the only option for Shelia until a spot opened up. When Sheila arrived, she would not speak and she would not participate in anything Torey and the rest of the children were doing. It was always a constant battle for Torey to try to get Sheila to do work and participate in class activities. There was something about Sheila that made Torey not want to give up on her. Torey knew that a state hospital was not a place Sheila should be put into, and that institution would not help Sheila at all which Torey felt was not fair for a 6-year old girl.
             Sheila was a brilliant child. Shelia was smarter than any other child Torey has ever worked with. Torey could not figure out how a child who came from such a horrific environment as Sheila did, with no one to teach her anything, was so brilliant and had such a high IQ. On the IQ test Sheila had taken, she topped out, earnin...