Sharing the joy of reading with a child

My mother, on widowhood, starting visiting a primary school in Inner London and the pleasure she received was immense.
Taking a train and the tube from aged 70, she 'retired' only at the age of 85, when she felt that her frailty made her potential liability in the bustle of busy corridors.

She helped with reading, the library and craft sessions. She was called on annually to give her talk on 'Life as an Evacuee during WW2' and became wardrobe mistress for the school productions.

The children (and staff!) loved her to bits. Mums would come up to her at the school gates full of gratitude. I went with her once, to hear her greeted by 'ooh, I like yer 'at, Miss' and 'is this your big girl, Miss?'😳.

She always went home feeling as if she had really made a contribution to the children's lives, laden often with home-made Easter, Christmas and 'thank you' cards (and enjoying a 'lovely' (sic) hot lunch!).

She was nominated for, and received, the BEM for services to the community and three members of staff attended her funeral.

A highly recommended rôle!

That is really impressive Ixion , for your mother to have a special in person relationship with a school to 85. The Bookmark Volunteer in this article is 91 , reading with a number of children every week from home , and loving it . I found this brilliant online platform as I wanted to continue after reading with my grandchildren in lockdown . It gave me a way to volunteer with children in school anywhere in the country at times that suited me , from early breakfast club to home time . Even induction , training and ongoing support were enjoyable. If away from home I can still log on for my sessions and I’m done before DH has showered!

I was accepted by Bookmark and did the training. Then everything fell apart. Because I live rurally I had to do the reading online. The problems were:

- very very inefficient online system with several different platforms that you have to have rather than just one.
- the systems crashed my computer at one point and wiped out all my saved [passwords - grrr!
- response times from the Bookmark team were very very slow which meant that any attempts to sort these things out dragged on for months.
- and - the final straw - they do not guide you as to which books might be suitable for the reading level of the child. You have to download books and tinker about randomly with the child to find their level. This creates the danger of a child switching off because the chosen book is either too difficult or too easy. It is s easy to put a child off reading by over-facing them with books that they cannot manage.

So, very reluctantly, I pulled out of the whole thing.

Hopefully the face-to-face version of the system works better.

That’s a pity Luckygirl 3 and not my experience at all . I found the whole system very easy to use and well supported . They’ve recently made big improvements in response to volunteer feedback , so maybe give it another go ?