Is it Worth it?

I have been mentally casting about for the perfect dissertation topic for the last year, or so.  Getting a little frantic about it for the last three months.  I need to get that baby nailed down, and SOON. I met with my UND adviser a couple of weeks ago and tried to define with her where my heart and passions lie. It was a bit like launching into the ocean in a dingy and thinking I can paddle my way to a distant continent.  So many topics.  So many things I’d like to know.  So many potential topics. She told me what I already knew. I have to narrow my focus. What is it I really want to know? I am adrift. The only thing I am certain of is my desire to center my research around Project Armchair.  Does what we do make a measurable difference in the lives of children in crisis?

One of the best parts of my summer thus far, has been teaching a parenting class at the homeless shelter on the value of reading aloud to children. The role it plays in language acquisition and vocabulary storehouses. The human contact between parent and child that accelerates brain development.  The conversations about reading that build neural pathways in developing brains. The cognitive strategies good readers employ in order to better comprehend texts.

Last night was the second class in a three-part series. As I dismissed my parenting group, I asked one of the mothers if I could talk to her for a moment.  “I have a question for you,” I began.  I then proceeded to stumble through seven or ten sentences of disjointed and illogical rabbit trails as I (vainly) attempted to pose my question to her, much like my conversation with my adviser. 

“What do you need?”  I began.  She looked at me like I must surely be outside my mind. I could almost hear her thoughts. What do I need?  Lady, I’m living with my children in a homeless shelter.  I have nothing.  I need everything.  How much time do you have and where do I begin??  She didn’t verbalize those things, but I surmise something along those lines passed through her mind, however fleetingly.

Good grief.  She must wonder how I ever managed to make it out of high school.

I backed up and made another run at it.  “Let me ask it another way,” I offered.  “I have two primary goals for Project Armchair.  One is to boost literacy.  I am a reading teacher.  I want to help kids become better readers. But beyond than that, and much bigger than that, I hope to give the children I read to a brief escape from their circumstances. That for the moments we are lost in the pages of a book, they forget that they are in a hospital or living in a homeless shelter.” I paused for a breath.  “From your perspective as a mother, is that a worthy goal?”

Her answer was instantaneous. 

“Yes, it IS worth it. When you come to read to my children, they are so excited! They come back to our room afterward and they want to talk about the book you gave them and they want to look at it some more.  Then after we’ve looked at it and talked about it, they tuck the book away in their “secret” hiding place, under their mattress.” She stopped and her animated face softened. “It is very much worth it.” Her words were heavy with meaning and conviction and uttered with soft intensity.

I felt the sting of tears threatening my eyes. A Ferris wheel of thoughts and emotions raced through my brain. In those few concise thoughts, she had provided me with several viable possibilities. She had also thanked me in a manner I will never forget.  It came from a heart that has known trial and difficulty, but recognized that there is hope and light.  In that moment, it all did feel worth it. She had given me a great gift.

Back to my question.  Do we make a measurable difference?  We make a difference. I believe it with every pump of my middle-aged heart.  I see it in the way the eyes of children light up when I walk in the door. I feel it in the grateful smiles of the parents. I sense it in the words of the pediatric floor nurses and administrators as they hand me lists of room numbers.

We DO make a difference.

Is it measurable?  Perhaps not. And perhaps scientific data does not matter.  Not in the grand scheme of things. A child who treasures a book so much they carefully hide it for later… that matters. Teachers who willingly and joyfully give of their precious few free hours to read to children in crisis… that matters as well.

I will close with this short anecdote. After my conversation at the homeless shelter last night, I met a light-up-the-room kind of teacher who needed to be observed as she read to children (a requirement of Project Armchair) before being allowed to read solo.  I sat in the pediatric floor play room and watched her read to three siblings, one of them with IV’s running into her body. I watched the magic happen as a third-party observer.  I witnessed shy children, unwilling to join her at the table initially, become active participants. I watched the smiles and then the giggles erupt from tired and bored faces. I glanced at their weary father who seemed delighted that his children were being entertained and transported from the stress of a hospital to the pages of an engaging book. Grateful that strangers care.

I have seen it countless times, but it never grows old.

Is it worth it?  I believe it is.