“It takes a village to raise a child.” — African proverb, often cited by Hillary Rodham Clinton

I’ve found that, in my current life, I missed interacting with children. A neighborhood school was looking for volunteer mentors. I filled out an application, met with administrators, underwent a record check, and was approved for mentoring. I expected that it would be a nice thing for me to do, and that I would feel good about helping kids.

The surprise turned out to be how much I am enjoying doing it. I was assigned one boy to mentor. He was absent the second day we were scheduled to meet, and the school asked if I would like to help another child. I did so.

Since then I’ve expanded my schedule, and meet with both boys, one after the other. They read at different levels, so to maintain the individual one-on-one time makes sense. The boys seem to enjoy my company. I think my efforts in helping with reading improvement are paying dividends, and that those gains are noticed and appreciated.

I got a very enthusiastic high five from one of the boys after he’d successfully read, and comprehended, a challenging essay. It was all text, and without illustrative cues or rhyming and sequential structure. I was proud of him – and he was proud of himself.

We’ve spent time examining a globe, and locating not only Michigan, but Mexico, Canada, Bonaire, Vietnam, Ireland, Spain, and Australia. We’ve had times where a boy reads a book aloud to me, while I follow along, and times where I read aloud and a b

oy reads aloud with me as he’s able. We completed an art project that had begun in the classroom. We spent a few minutes playing with Fidgets; the boy got to instruct me in something.

The school in which I mentor is much different from the one my son attended. We had the good fortune to live in a community with excellent public schools. The urban school where I volunteer is in a different district, and faces some challenges not as prevalent in the suburban school district where we lived.  

The boys and I have gotten to a certain rhythm. I suppose I’ve learned how to take cues. I’ve learned to watch their eyes as I scan the text. Not every word comes easily, and, I think, it’s my role to patiently give the boy time to sound it out, to decode from context, and to explore illustrations for clues*

*For example, one book used an unfamiliar word which began with K. The child wasn’t sure what the word was, and looked at the illustrations – which included a kangaroo, a kite, etc. From the context of the story, he could tell which word fit the story, and read it, proudly, as his mentor smiled

Some words are very unfamiliar, and not amenable to sounding out, and lack other decoding mechanisms. The boy gives me a cue when this happens. He shifts his eyes from the page to my eyes. I provide the word. If I think a phrase of explanation is helpful, I toss that out. Or not, depending on my assessment of things like flow and the necessity of learning that particular word.

It is very gratifying to me to hear the child successfully encounter a new word that appears a page or two later.