5-28-2025 - Last Day of Reading for 2025 School Year
Today was my last day of volunteer reading for this school year. It has been a fantastic year and I have mixed feelings about today. I feel very positive about the difference that I hopefully made for the students this year. But the thought of letting the kids go now, possibly never to see again, has me saddened. I don’t know how teachers do this every year. I guess they just get used to it?!
Everyone got to read their Favorite Books:
Since it was the last reading day of the year, I brought everybody’s favorite books with me.
For Jack, this meant the funny books of course. We read Rhyming Dust Bunnies, Is Everyone Ready for Fun, and The Doghouse (all Jan Thomas books). We talked about whether Jack would be reading over the summer. Sadly, I got the sense that he was more likely to be playing video games. This is too bad because with a little bit of encouragement I could see Jack being a regular reader.
Anaya’s favorite book all year has been Brown Bear Brown Bear, What Do You See? She prefers to read on her own, which she did, twice, impressing all the other kids in the vicinity. We also ‘read’ My Friends. She read this too, from memory. I only helped her with a couple words she wasn’t sure about. Anaya takes great pride in being able to read and it’s a beautiful thing to watch.
Issabella loves to read new books. She is my go-to critic for new stuff, and I can tell she enjoys that role - being an authority of sorts. The first new-to-her book that we read was How Diablo Became Spirit. This is the first non-fiction “true story” that we had read together. This is a very wonderful story about a black leopard that communicates with a human to improve his situation. The story has a very happy ending! Issabella approved of this story. “I like it - very good!”, she said.
We then read another book we hadn’t read before, Why Not You?. Issabella loved this book. She loved the parts that said “Why not You? Why not You?” and repeated that phrase over and over because she liked the sound of it.
My favorite quote from the book is this:
“Why not You? Why not You?
You are Great! You have the stuff!
You can drop your doubts and worries.
You’re perfection. You’re enough.”
I could see Issabella practically sigh with relief to hear that she was enough. Or, maybe that was me :-)
Issabella and I finished off with My Friends which is an old favorite.
Conclusions About Reading this Year:
The physical act of going to school once a week, bringing books and reading to children, is not such a huge task or time commitment. The day-to-day energy level to accomplish this is not such a great burden.
But the result of the caring, loving energy that you put into the task, is huge! Basically you become the advocate for books and reading for these children. Kids obviously are learning to read books in school, but those books they “have” to read. I think it’s vitally important to give kids a chance to just enjoy books for their own sake, and to let kids experience choosing books for themselves and their own enjoyment.
I believe that I helped inspire 5 children to fall in love with books this year: Anaya, Isabella, Jack, Carly, and Leon. And next year I hope to continue the journey with some of the returning students. I feel great about those results. I feel like I’m truly helping some fellow human beings.
I highly recommend this type of generosity - generosity of your time and of yourself. Not to be boastful, but I’m feeling a sense of pride and contentedness that I’ve rarely felt before. This is what it feels like to give yourself away a little bit. It’s a divine feeling and I recommend that everyone try it! What a difference we could make if each of us gave a little bit of ourselves away to the world in our most authentic way.
