celebrating...

... Dr. Seuss' birthday by going to an elementary school with my little selection of books to 'Read Across America'. Somehow got 'drafted' as a volunteer when I received an email from the Literacy Alliance coordinator who sets up adult readers with four year olds in public schools needing assistance in pre-reading skills. I've been doing it for several years, taking an hour from work to go to an elementary school. Where I devote about twenty minutes per, to two students who have been suggested by their pre-K teacher as lagging behind classmates in learning the basics.


I honestly cannot recall how long this has been going or, or how I got started. But I believe so strongly in the importance of literacy, the necessity of learning how to decipher the letters strung together into words I will continue as long as I can. Volunteers go for an eight week stretch in the spring and fall to various schools around town. There is a different person, going each day of the week to read, help with a little work sheet, then giving the child his/her book to take home each Friday.

More and more I realize how vital it is to be able to read to be successful in the world, make your way in our society. An individual who cannot readily understand signs, instructions, written words  routinely encountered in daily life will soon feel lost, and be at a constant disadvantage. Can't read equals cannot easily make it in the workplace. We have all head stories about adults who reluctantly confess after many years of laboring in blue collar jobs that they are not literate: ready to learn how. Having struggled in elementary grades, or never actually having the opportunity to get basic education, so not able to understand written language. Adults so determined to learn how, they are willing to go back to grade school, or searching out tutors to help them learn, and study for general education degrees. It must give them a tremendous sense of gratification and accomplishment when they gain those basic skills so many of us take for granted.

I recruited my friend S. to go to the elementary school on Friday morning, spend thirty minutes in a classroom reading. She is a retired educator, having spent the last years of her career as a reading specialist, helping young students who were struggling. So I know she is very capable for instructing, and assisting youngsters who have a hard time with grasping the concepts of phonics and how to break down words to sound them out. I was surprised and amused by her self-doubt, concerns that she would not do a good job, worried about what books to take, who she would be reading to. This  from a woman who has six grandchildren and has read them story books for over fifteen years. Probably memorized 'The Cat in the Hat' after repetitive readings over hundreds of nights at bedtime.

I did not tell her she is being groomed to become a literacy volunteer. I had passed her name and number along to the Alliance coordinator, with the suggestion of recruiting her as a regular in the twice yearly reading sessions.Anyone who spent years of her life pulling, pushing, persuading small children to put a fat little finger on each word and say it out loud surely can help a four year old read a ten page book once a week.