Through Rainbow-Filled Eyes by Sophie

Through Rainbow-Filled Eyes by Sophie - May 2018 Scholarship Essay

I am a very academically-oriented person, and an opportunity to use this love of learning in order to help those younger students who were less-advantaged was one that suited me down to the ground. My role at the Homework Diner was simple: to help the children with their homework, which was often no simple task with some of the more stubborn among them, and to supervise them in the cafeteria when they were eating a meal provided by the agency. I recall that on the first day I walked in and was assigned to a grade level, that day fourth grade, there were very few people in the large cafeteria because, in my eagerness, I came early. I had ample opportunity to observe the many young children come in through the inconspicuous side door, ranging in age from the substantial eighth-grader to the slight, timid kindergartener. Each one came in shyly, each registering at the front desk and then slinking off inconspicuously to the table with their designated grade level. With still two minutes to go, a small girl with a Shopkins backpack and a brightly-colored, sparkly shirt quietly entered, her head low and eyes downcast. She quickly signed in and set off towards the table that I had been assigned: fourth grade. I introduced myself, and she would respond to my questions with brief, mono-syllabic responses, never truly meeting my eyes. Bit by bit we went through her homework, and bit by bit she began to become more comfortable with me, and with no other fourth graders at the table to interrupt, I felt that she and I became friends. I left the cafeteria that day tired but happy, knowing that next time she might talk more, next time she might smile, and next time I could know that it was I who had caused that smile. True enough, I returned the next week, and she was already at the table, waiting for me; in her excitement she hugged me, and we sat down together to do her homework. When a child finishes their homework before the allotted amount of time, the homework diner has a shelf of donated books to which a child must be escorted to choose a selection that they must read aloud to their tutor. She would rush through the words, reading them without any meaning or thought attached, each page of words not a story but rather a verbal obstacle course, each word lying in wait like some inscrutable monster from the depths of the human pen. When she encountered a word she did not know or was unable to pronounce, she would instead substitute a work that was similar in spelling or even words that were completely unrelated. Storybooks held no meaning to her other than the brightly colored hippos and giraffes, princesses and unicorns that were illustrated gamboling among the words which seemed to attack her so. Books like Junie B. Jones were torment, for their colorless pages and bleak text were not only uninspiring, but their structured paragraphs and blocks of text were intimidating to her, ironically, beyond words. Thus, each day she and I would read books, each of us taking a turn to read a sentence, and day by day she grew more confident in her reading, giggling at the hippos who sneezed and the talking rainbows that floated around in her imagination, each of them a character she encountered in her reading. She began coming to the diner with all of her homework completed just so that she could have more time to read with me. With every book she chose I learned her tastes and personality; she was drawn towards bright illustrations and funny animals, which coordinated with what I became privileged to know as her truthfully bright, colorful personality. In my time at the diner I hope that I introduced to her a world that I believe without me she would otherwise not have found; the magical world illustrated in books. Even more so, the diner provides nourishment for the minds of the children, doing so through the attentive, personalized tutoring it provides through the willing, open hearts of the relatable teenage community. I had the defined role of making a difference in the life of a child, in the life of my little friend of whom I saw so much and with whom I developed such a relationship. These children were and are impressionable and young, and I was and am unspeakably honored that I was entrusted with forming them, shaping them so that they could enter into the world with a future all that much brighter. The last time I went to the diner I found that my little friend had stopped coming, at least for a time. I hope that I will get to see her again soon, that I will get to read with her again, and that once more I can help her see the world with brighter, rainbow-filled eyes.