When I was growing up, I couldn’t get enough of reading. I read everything I could get my hands on: from my mom’s old med school textbooks to back issues of the National Geographic Magazine; from my dad’s paperback novels to Reader’s Digests; from the newspapers to the backs of shampoo bottles. I read it all, even when I had no idea what I was reading, I read ’em all.
And then I went to kindergarten and grade school. It was then that I first noticed I was nearsighted. Having been on the receiving end of numerous scoldings for holding the page to close to my nose when reading, I kept quiet about it. Instead, I learned that if I looked at things through a small enough hole, they would appear clearer. So throughout my first grade, I would sit up in my seat and peer at the blackboard through the pinhole I made by my bent finger.
Needless to say, that made me soooooo popular. But hey, I wanted to read.
At home, regardless of what grade level I was in, reading was a constant preoccupation. More of than not, for example, my presents would come in the form of books. Hardy Boys when I was younger, and those Choose Your Own Adventure books when I got older.
I kept on dead-ending this particular adventure for some reason
I could go on and on – as in fact I think I have – about my love for books. But just to belatedly cut this long story short, I was what older people in Iloilo (where I grew up) a wide reader. And no, I wasn’t wide enough at the time for that joke to make any sense.
And it was exactly that – being a wide reader – that made me into the person I am today. So, when I found out recently that elementary school students in public schools today are struggling readers, and that we ranked dead last in the reading part of the 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), it was like I had been gut punched.
Cellar dwellers we are (Image from Rappler.com)
In that moment, I suddenly realized that I had been taking reading skills for granted. I always thought that reading came naturally once you’d memorized your ABCs, and that people would naturally pick up new words as a result of, y’know, living in the world? As it turns out, not so much.
That epiphany galvanized me into action and directly led to my commitment to support Legarda Elementary School’s remedial reading program with my own initiative – Feed + Read + Lead.
Needless to say, that made me soooooo popular. But hey, I wanted to read.
