why, oh why, does the little bird sing.
There are two main questions I have while writing this post… Number one, why am I doing this? and two whats it going to be about? Well for starters go ahead and forget the first question because I don’t even know, as for the second im going to talk about me, how I got here and where I’m going.
While every good story starts at the beginning this one does not. I am going to start with what happened today and if you follow along you will learn about me as you go…
Today I went to the boys and girls club of Ottawa to volunteer with “underprivileged” children in grade school. I used to help out in their summer camp program but now with school starting I am trying out the homework club. Today was my first day and things went well, I get along great with children and enjoy spending time with these kids, most of whom remind me of myself I growing up poor and hating the world for it.
During the session I went over math, spelling, french and so on with a number of children both asking for help and nearly trying to claw their way out of the room. Near the end of my time there, a young boy named Josh (in grade 4) asked me to come over and help him with his homework due the next day. I took an immediate liking to the kid as he opened his notebook and showed me had done none of his homework and didn’t really care to do it. Just like me back in the day! I asked him if he was worried he would get in trouble and he replied that neither his family or his teachers seemed to care much. So I asked him why he wanted me to help him if he didn’t want to do it and there were no consequences? (growing up I would have seen this as an open and shut case of “thanks for the assignment now go fuck off”). But instead he told me that he wanted to learn and get better so that he could be rich someday. This little kid had figured out in grade 4 what took me until college to understand, education is the key to success. So we jumped right into the work and he, with my help, began steadily getting through his assigned homework.
The real point of this post is that when we got to the language section I quickly realized the little guy couldn’t read and couldn’t even spell his full name. I was so shocked my jaw almost hit the floor, I kept my feelings to myself however and we went over some of the basics of what he could do to improve both his reading and writing. As much as mum may have let us boys run free, I am forever grateful she put her foot down about reading, I cant believe that a child is able to slip through grade one material and no one notices. After we finished Josh thanked me and said he really liked that I helped him out and that he would practice his reading in hopes that next week we can move forward. I was just starting to think that maybe society and this kid’s social/economic situation couldn’t hold him back when he asked if I thought he had a chance of “fucking” his female classmate… This time I couldn’t hide my surprise to which he wrinkled his nose, put on his headphones and flashed me the west coast gang sign before going off to play pool in the games room.
I may not be a great leader or a powerful man, however I will try my best to make the world a better place. Today I feel that helping Josh with his homework did more good than anything else I did all week. So goodluck to him in both his studies and umm uhh… extracurricular pursuits.
|A|
