Getting Oriented

I would have thought that reading countless books to my two children as they grew up would be all the training I would need to read aloud to children in homeless shelters. As I attended the orientation training for my newest volunteer activity, I began to realize this was not going to be quite the same.

I walked into a room of 17 other volunteers, fully expecting to find mostly people like myself who were retired and had the time necessary to devote to volunteer activities. But instead these were mostly people 20 years younger than I was who were still very active in a variety of careers. The one thing we all had in common was a love of reading that was obvious as we went around the table and named our favorite children’s book. I mentioned the Roald Dahl books, remembering quite well the year we read them all.

The coordinator opened the session by stating that the one factor that seems to most influence a child’s success in school is exposure to books and specifically to reading aloud. Whereas many children enter kindergarten having spent 1700 hours being read to by their parents, many lower-income families have spent an average of only 25 hours reading to their pre-school children.

The Reading Connection has been in existence for 15 years and now serves 14 sites in Northern Virginia and DC. Four nights a week volunteers at each of these sites spend an hour reading to the children and doing some sort of project with them all centered around the theme for the month. This month’s theme, for example, is “monsters” and you can guess that the Maurice Sendak book “Where the Wild Things Are” is a favorite. An individual volunteer has only one shift per month. But the book selection and “activity” is coordinated by the team to which that person is assigned. I had never envisioned reading to children involving so much organization and bureaucracy.

In addition to hearing books read aloud, each child receives a bag (made by a volunteer) containing books and a box of art supplies. Children are still eligible to receive free books after they move out of the homeless shelter.

As we talked about the importance of planning and doing a test-read ahead of time, I found myself thinking about the reality of what I might find the first time I was sent to read aloud. Would I have to spend more time dealing with behavior issues than in reading my chosen books? What if the children didn’t speak English and couldn’t understand the words I was speaking? What if the age range was so great that no book would be appropriate for everyone? What if I wasn’t sensitive enough to the circumstances that had landed my young audience in this situation? What if reading to my own children hadn’t prepared me for this task after all?

Then I remembered taking Santiago and his brother Jerry to the library in Oxon Hill. I remembered reading to them and realized although they weren’t homeless, they were very much in need of hearing English read to them and I had done just fine.

The next issue will be which site I get assigned to. They are desperate for volunteers for the 3 DC sites, which are all in Anacostia. I’m not crazy about driving alone to that area of the city at night, but I know those children need to be read to.

But before I can be assigned anywhere, the staff must call my references! That’s right, there’s a background check for this volunteer job to read to children. Yikes! I hope my friends say good things about me.

I have a feeling this is going to be a job I come to love. Reading has the potential to open doors to these children who have already experienced the harsh realities of life at a young age. I want to make a difference for them.