Results Are In

This past school year I became a tutor for Reading Partners, a program where I was able to partner up with an elementary student and help that struggling individual improve their reading skills. This is the path I chose in order to complete challenge no. 21 (permanently and positively enrich the life of a child without financial contribution).

My experience was insanely positive, and yesterday it was made even more so when I received the results of our volunteering:

"We are pleased to announce that 88% of students served accelerated their rate of learning."

These are pretty outstanding results, especially considering that this was Reading Partner's first year in NYC.

I performed one of my many jigs in celebration.

Taco Night

Challenge no. 8 was to spend the night in a women's shelter. I have to be honest, this one scared me a bit. Not because I'd have to spend the night in a women's shelter, but because I'd be exposed to a world that I usually try to avoid. Obviously I'm going to keep the name and the location of the shelter private, but I will say that it was a church-based facility and in Manhattan. I was one of two overnight volunteers for this particular shelter.

I arrived at 7:30 p.m. just as all of the "guests" were arriving. Some went straight to the food. It was taco night. Some grabbed their cots and rolled them to their desired area of the large room. Some were talkative. Others kept to themselves. Some stared at me. Others pretended I wasn't even there.

Like I mentioned in my teaser post (check it out to see a few pictures), I sat and talked with some of the women. The whole evening took on an oddly narrative form. I felt like I was in a movie, hearing scripted dialogue and learning more and more about each of the characters as the night went on:

TRACY
A large woman sporting short hair, thin-rimmed glasses and a Walkman enters the room. When she speaks, asking for a cup of salt, I hear a deep, soulful voice. She's had a tooth pulled today. But don't worry -- she has a high pain tolerance. Tracy is the veteran of the group. She knows the ins and outs of the shelter, when to talk and when to keep her mouth shut. She simply shakes her head when another woman threatens to make a scene after failing to bum a cigarette outside. Sitting around the dining table, Tracy stares at a pineapple chunk for a few seconds before going for the creamed spinach instead. She is listening to the basketball game on her headphones.

KENYA
Her hair is wrapped in a white scarf, piled high on her head. She's thirty-eight but I would have guessed twenty-five. She is the most talkative at dinner, eating fast and smiling wide. The plantains are her favorite. Kenya's mother was a twin. Kenya looks more like her aunt. Her mother was a doll maker, and her twin sister made the doll clothes. She learned how to crochet from her aunt. Tonight she crochets a red, pink and white blanket with a geometric pattern. I tell her it is beautiful, and it really is. I make a mental note to buy her some purple yarn. It's her favorite color.

OLGA
A tall woman with curly white hair introduces herself as Olga, of Native American and African American descent. Before dinner, when everyone is setting up their cots, she teaches me how to tie my sheets under my cot so that bugs won't crawl up them in the night. I find this extremely helpful as I prefer my sleep to be bug-free. Olga believes that when you sleep somewhere, you leave a little bit of your soul. She lingers at the dining table with me and tells me a story: In the 1970s, when she was in her twenties, she traveled to a place called Cumming, Georgia. I have not told her where I am from. She had to hide in the backseat of the car and scurry indoors and face dirty looks and dirtier language. I do not think it's a coincidence that I ended up at this shelter with this woman hearing this story.

Lights out at 10:00. I sleep on a cot among all of the other guests. I hear the air conditioning and the hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen and the distant sound of the basketball game on Tracy's headphones across the room. As my eyes adjust I see various traps around my cot, not knowing what exactly they are intended to catch. It smells musty and muggy and unfamiliar. I'm not sure when I finally fell asleep, probably around 1:00 a.m. Before I knew it, it was time to get up. At 5:30 a.m.

By 6:15 a.m. everyone had grabbed something to eat and started to leave. The other volunteer and I put the cots away. We put the dirty linens in a large bag. We put the coffee maker back in the kitchen. And then I went home.

Home. Where I can go anytime. Where I can shower and choose what to wear and cuddle with my dog and watch TV. Where I can order food or cook food or throw a party or do yoga. Where I can live.

An Abrupt End

Breaking news: My beloved M has moved to a new school. For those of you just joining us on this challenge ride, M was the 8-year-old I was tutoring through a program called Reading Partners for challenge no. 21 (permanently and positively enrich the life of a child). Things started off quite chaotic until we fell into a rhythm of friendship and joyous learning. Just go ahead and imagine a feel-good montage filled with piles of books, nods of approval, and slow-motion high-fives.

I didn't even get to say goodbye! She is out of my life forever, and I have no idea where she'll go or who she'll become. I'd like to think that our short time together left an impression on her crazy (in a good way!) brain, maybe if only subconsciously, and one day when she is at a crossroads in her life, she will remember that one day in Room 306 when some weird old person told her that she could accomplish great things if she just worked hard and never gave up on learning. And in twenty years I'll be floating by a bookstore window on my hoverboard and see a display for the latest best-selling novel by someone named M, and I will smile a smile from the movies.

I think it's pretty clear that she may have enriched my life more than I did hers.

Yesterday I was assigned a new student to tutor. We will call her J. She is in the fourth grade, a much more advanced reader than M was. J is one of the sweetest little girls I have ever met. She is new to the school, which at this point does not surprise me, and is eager to learn.

We read a story about Paul Bunyon, during which I learned that J had never heard of the Grand Canyon and didn't know what a prairie or a pasture was. It's amazing how different your world view is when all you know is the five boroughs, when you change schools depending on what shelter you're living in, when you've seen a lifetime of hardship by the age of ten.

Hopefully J and I will work together long enough for me to meet this challenge. She certainly deserves my best effort.

Whoa, that ended heavier than anticipated. This one's for generation Y:

M

Today was my first tutoring session with Reading Partners (per challenge #21). I met my student who I will be meeting with once a week for the rest of the semester, an 8-year-old second grader who we will call M.

It started out pretty well. She clearly has about 43 kinds of ADD, but we were able to truck along through the "get to know you" exercise. I pointed out Georgia on a map so she could see where I'm from. She told me about being the youngest of five children and how she wants to be just like her two older sisters. She likes french fries and the color pink (red is also acceptable).

When it was her turn to ask me questions (reading from a provided list), she did very well. With the first two questions. The third question had a word in it that she didn't know. As I started to help her sound it out, she made it clear that she wanted to do it herself. So I let her try. For ten minutes. Finally, I had to jump in because otherwise we'd get nowhere, but when I made the word's first sound, she flipped out. Fa-lipped out. 

For the next 20 minutes I literally chased her around the room while she screamed "You told me! You weren't supposed to tell me!" She wouldn't look at me or talk to me. Keep in mind that we haven't even started the actual lesson for the day.

Meanwhile the other tutors and students are living out a real-life Hallmark commercial.

Finally I got M back in her chair and on to the next exercise -- drawing her own book cover. Still quite reluctant, she drew a sun. Great! Progress! Then some clouds and some grass. Wonderful! Then she drew two heads with X's for eyes and said that "they were murdered and died and are ghosts and that's what happened and it's a scary story."

Awesome.

And here is where I get kind of sad because M obviously has some bad things going on in her life, things that her reading tutor isn't really able (or allowed) to help with. The coordinator (who is present in the room at all times) is going to talk to her teacher and see what's going on, so I may or may not have M in the future.

Stay tuned. It's going to be an interesting semester.

I'm Going to Help a Kid Read Good

I have officially landed on a program for challenge #21 (make a difference in a child's life without monetary contribution). After being rejected from the Big Brothers Big Sisters program, blasting their Facebook page with expletives and punching a few random kids just for good measure, I knew I still wanted that one-on-one opportunity to work with a child and turn them into a tiny confident goal-oriented genius.

Then I found Reading Partners. This program has been around for ten years but only recently came to the New York City area. Their goal is simple: Help kids read better. Being a writer of words, I'd prefer if people could read them. This program felt like a perfect match.

This week I attend my shadow session, where I will learn the ins and outs of the program and how a typical lesson goes down. Then I will be paired up with an elementary school student on the Lower East Side, meeting with him or her once a week for at least one full semester. The best part is, they provide you with the lesson plan and all the materials, so all I have to bring is my upbeat personality (working on that one) and philanthropic spirit.

Here is how I'm hoping the semester will progress:

 

And by the end of the semester they better be at least halfway through Game of Thrones.

**Reading Partners accepts donations, if you feel so inclined.**

Big Sister

To be honest, when I received the "make a difference in a child's life without throwing money at them" challenge, my mind immediately went to a swift good deed that I could do in one day and knock off my list. But that's not much of a challenge. So after some quality time with Internet, I made my decision to apply to be a Big.

As in, a big sister in the Big Brothers Big Sisters program of NYC. The commitment is pretty substantial (two times a month for at least a year), but it's a chance to spend time with one kid who got dealt some crappy life cards and establish a positive relationship that will stick with them for the rest of their life.

I submitted my application online and exchanged some emails with one of the representatives. I was already beginning to imagine the things I could do with my little sister around NYC. After a few weeks of waiting, I finally received an answer:

Damn. Back to square one with this challenge. If anyone has any recommendations for programs where I can help a kid one-on-one, feel free to share.