READING ACES

At the beginning of the school year, I signed up to volunteer at an African American center, known as Reading Aces. Reading Aces is an organization that provides low income children all the necessary help and support to improve and succeed in their academic life. They recruit volunteers of different ages to tutor the students and encourage them to study harder.

I always believed that making a change in the world should start with reducing the rate of illiterates and promoting education. This is the reason why I chose to volunteer as a tutor and teach these future leaders the basic academic skills.

Every Thursday after school, I go to Reading Aces for an hour, on average. My task is to read books to younger kids, help primary students with their homework, and if needed, teach them a couple of basic skills that they seem to lack.

I look forward to every Thursday because I love interacting with children, especially if my presence would have a positive impact on their life. I enjoy teaching each of them, even if it gets frustrating sometimes: I worked with many 4th graders who didn’t know how to add and subtract numbers, or how to form a proper sentence. This shows me how poor the education, in some public schools, can be and how some teachers don’t devote themselves for the success of these kids. This is why, every time I go there, I feel satisfied knowing that I am contributing to the integrity, and, hopefully, success of these kids.

This experience also makes me feel grateful towards all my teachers for devoting themselves and their time to help me build my character and further my motivation in life, but also for being so patient. I never realised how hard it was to explain things to students, especially when they are younger. I always struggled teaching them how to add numbers together, because it is such a simple and basic step that it is very hard to explain.

Overall, it is a very good learning experience that I will hope to continue in the future.