Read–With-Me At HGS

Location: House Of The Good Shepherd

Date: Tuesday, January 22, 2013; 6:20-7:30 pm

One of the reasons I started maintaining this blog is to share my experiences with everyone; not just documenting them as a journal, but also naming everyone that I have met and the children that I have worked with - even though I change the client's names for privacy reasons.  By doing so, I hope to create in the readers mind a true vision of the people I have encountered and the places I have visited.  However, this blog is going to be a bit different because of the privacy requirements that all the volunteers at HGS have to respect.  Being a shelter for victims of domestic violence, I am forbidden to reveal its location and mention names of children that I met, even though the names would have been made-up.  But that will not deter me from describing another enriching experience.

Upon arriving at the location I told Emily, our volunteer leader, about this blog and promised to be discrete, especially since she had sent an email a couple of days before asking us to keep the address confidential and not take any pictures while on the premises.  After other volunteers, Erin, Kristin, Jonathan and Mark had arrived; we went to the reading room, which also functioned as the play area.  Soon the children came in and privacy or not, it was the exact same scene I have encountered at other places – lot of running around and screaming.  They started selecting the volunteers they wanted to pair with and it wasn’t surprising to see the women being picked first.  Emily asked one of the boys to sit with me and I knew we were going to have to work on our relationship.  He seemed disinterested in reading and wanted to get to the arts and crafts activity that is usually reserved for the second half of the evening.  However, rules must be obeyed and he reluctantly picked a book. 

Clifford and his party

The book he had selected was called ‘Clifford’s Birthday Party’.  It’s a story about a giant red dog called Clifford and how he celebrates his, well…birthday.  The boy did not want to read this and while I tried encouraging him in various ways, such as promising to read alternate pages, he was not into it.  So rather than just read, I decided to employ a different tactic and decided to discuss the story with him.  In the story, Clifford faces a lot of difficulty with his birthday presents.  For example, one of his presents is a blow-up ball, which gets huge and finally blows up.  We discussed this and how Clifford could have avoided it, as well as Clifford’s fiasco with other presents.  I asked him if he liked dogs and he said yes.  I asked what he would call it and he replied that he would name the dog ‘Pepper’.  We were definitely making some progress. 

We managed to get through the book, including a happy conclusion where Clifford gets the gift that he really wanted, his family.  Since we had some more time, we picked another book, ‘Tiny The Snow Dog’.  We were certainly following a theme here.  Once again, I decided to ‘tell’ him the story rather than just take turns reading it.  This is a tale of Tiny, the dog, and his human friend – a little boy.  It’s snow outside and they are playing, when Tiny decides to play hide and seek. The rest of the book is the fun as the boy tries to find Tiny.  As we finished the book, I asked the boy I was working with if he would have a birthday party for Pepper.  He said that he would.  What would he then get as presents for Pepper?  He said that he would get him a snow hat, coat and ball.  I was pleased to see that he had been paying attention and had combined both the stories into one fantasy.  From where we had started, this was a success.

Tiny and his friend

Emily brought us all together at the central table for the next activity, ‘Q-Tip Painting’.  What this involves is dipping a Q-tip in water colors, and then using it to create images on paper.  Emily demonstrated how it was to be done and created a really nice picture.  I asked my boy what he wanted to do and since he was not sure, suggested he draw Pepper.  He liked that and proceeded to have two attempts at drawing Pepper and his birthday presents – hat, coat, ball and snow.  While it was no Renoir, the imagination was there, and that would definitely do for this evening. 

After the kids had played for a while, we decided to call it a night and everyone departed.  I walked back to the station with another volunteer, Mark, and learned that he was an active participant in Chicago Cares projects.  “You must know Wilson”, I said and was not surprised to hear that he did.  We discussed Chicago Cares and Wilson on the train and he told me that Wilson in fact had even gone to volunteer for Red Cross disaster relief in New Jersey after Hurricane Sandy.  The legend grows!  On my way home, I remembered how apprehensive I had been after reading Emily’s email regarding the privacy rules at HGS.  I had feared that it may turn out to be a somber evening because of the kids that we were dealing with.  Thankfully, I had once again been wrong in my initial assumption.  While some of the physical scars had been visible, they had not affected the children one bit in their enthusiasm for having fun.  For that, HGS and Chicago Cares deserve a lot of credit.