or Q is for Cute
I have a thing about "qute" spellings of words. I don't like them. I didn't used to mind, but that all changed after one year in New Orleans doing a service project with our church.
Ward and I were young professionals spending a lot of time at our jobs. We had big projects with deadlines that could only be met by spending many hours at the office. To add something else to our life besides work, we spent every Wednesday afternoon tutoring young kids at a local church. The kids were in kindergarten through second grade from disadvantaged families. A van would pick them up after school and bring them to the church for snacks and tutoring from volunteers, including Ward and me. The idea was early intervention with learning would help prevent problems further down the road.
What a surprise these kids were for us. Reading was a big part of both of our households growing up, but not for these kids. They had no reading material in their homes. Not a newspaper, not a book, not even a TV guide. None of these kids could read and not all of them even knew the alphabet. TV was the main form of entertainment and where they got their examples. "What's a word that starts with J?"
"Jack from Three's Company"
Their home life was difficult with all of them living in housing projects. I remember one day when Eric, whom we worked with, was excited because he was going to get to visit his uncle in jail. His father was no where in sight and his uncle was a special person to him.
As I saw how these kids struggled, I started to look at things differently. I noticed when words were spelled with cute spellings for advertising. All I could think about when I saw them was how hard reading was for these kids and they didn't need help with nonstandard spellings.
And I started to be less judgmental about what people were reading. I didn't realize it, but I was judging people by their choice in reading material. I didn't think as highly of someone reading a romance novel as someone reading a classic. But after working with these kids, I was very happy to see someone reading. Anything. It didn't matter what the content was. Ward and I rode the bus to work through some of these housing projects where these kids lived. Not many people were reading on the bus, but my heart sang when I saw someone reading, no matter what it was.
I'd like to say that Eric eventually went to college because of our early work with him, but I don't know where he ended up. And the saddest part of the whole experience was I felt like were already too late. We went every week, but I didn't feel like we were making a difference with these kids. They needed more help than we could them, but I hope I am wrong. I hope we planted a little seed somewhere that helped them live a better life.
