This year in our college ministry we wanted to find a social justice issue that was important to us that we could begin to combat as a group. We settled on education. We’re working on finding a project that allows us to combat that globally, but this week we started our first local project for it. We’re partnering with an elementary school to pair our students with theirs who need help reading. It took a few weeks to get background checks, paperwork, and scheduling done, but today we finally.
While I’d been looking forward to the opportunity, I had no idea how much fun I’d have. In my first classroom, I sat and read “Sideways Stories from the Wayside School” to a class full of third graders. I read this book when I was their age and forgot how much fun it was! I got to do different voices and intonations, and watching the kids reactions to that was incredibly fun. In addition to helping with reading skills, I hope to be able to use time with these kids to instill in them the love for reading that was instilled in me at such a young age.
For my second class, I was with a group of kindergartners. Today, I spent time with them at their recess to get to know them so that it’s not really awkward when I spend one on one time with them working on reading skills. The energy in these kids astounded me. I can’t imagine that I have as much energy in my pinky finger as these kids seemed to have. I loved being reminded of the innocence of young children too. They want to know your name, where you’re from, who your mommy and daddy are, and they want to show you their tricks and how fast they run. They ALL want to show you how fast they can run. It was a great experience though, and I’m looking forward to working with them over the coming months.
Like I said before, I had been excited about the reading program, but nothing could have prepared me for the fun I had today. I left incredibly excited about, and looking forward to next week. Actually interacting with the kids showed me how great an opportunity just sitting and reading for an hour a week can be to minister. I am thankful that God put this opportunity in our laps.
Grace & Peace,
Stippick
