Birny the Reader

Often it is just the small things or the simple things that bring a smile to one's face at CSC. Nearly all of the kids that come to our shelter are working with quite a deficit of "world" experience. That deficit may show itself in such ways as an unawareness of anything outside their previous community, not knowing when their birthday is, a lack of knowledge of anything technologically advanced, or zero education, even at an adolescent age. So those of us on the staff get a chance to see a lot of things the kids will marvel at or just begin to gain knowledge of that we probably take for granted.

For Birny, one of those things is reading. And his reading brought a broad smile to my face just yesterday. Academics have been a struggle for Birny since he came to CSC 4 1/2 years ago when he was just shy of his 7th birthday. But each school year his teachers have worked patiently with him and saw him make slow, but fairly steady progress. Any time we received a piece of good news about Birny in the classroom, it was noteworthy.

Much of that good news has been due to a lot of special efforts on Birny's behalf to help him in the areas he struggled in, primarily reading. Birny has spent many an hour over the past four years benifitting from one-on-one instruction (or II, as we call it here), which brings us to this week.

When Teacher Shari (our school consultant Shari Reasoner) is here in Cebu during one of her four or five month-long stints each year, she will take special time to work with some of our students who need a little extra help. A few times each week Birny will get to come into the library, put on a special "reading" t-shirt, and proceed to do some fun reading with Teacher Shari. He loves it, looks forward to it, does it with a lot of enthusiasm, and gets a great boost to his self-image. Having had a love for reading and books myself since my childhood, I get a lot of joy out of hearing a young reader enjoy a book and read it with passion and eagerness. Way to go Birny (and Teacher Shari)!