Angela spends time with children who benefit from one-to-one support: “You know, you may not even read with some of them. There’s one little boy whose spoken English is great but he’s not so good at reading. If you get him chatting…he will try to read. Encouragement is all that's needed. And it’s so sweet, the teachers call it their Special Time. We sit outside in the corridor on a little round table and usually have about half an hour or so each. So I’ll see three or four children each week”.
As well as helping the kids with their reading, Angela also loves to chat. “You hear about their dogs and their mums and their dads, and this and that and the other, and how many brothers and sisters they’ve got, and dinners and”…she trails off, thinking about every real-life short story she has ever been told over a colour-coded educational reading book. The life lessons Angela explores with the children may be infinite, but the book selection isn’t. “There’s one they always choose – a book about a boy who buys a dog that looks like an angel until they go home, and then it’s a little monster. The theory at the end is that things often aren’t as they seem. Heavens above, if I read that book one more time!”.
Angela is keen to confirm the main reason she volunteers: “It’s fun. They can’t believe that I’m older than their grandma. Of course I’m older than their grandma!”. She laughs loudly. But there are added bonuses: it’s not just the kids who are learning. Occasionally, she sees children she knows from school when she’s in town at the weekend. There’s a lot of kids and just one Angela; a lot of names to remember, and just one Angela. This can be a challenge: “You go down the high street and you suddenly hear a little voice say “Hello Angela” and you think ‘Oh Crumbs! Who was that’?!”. Remembering their names is hard, but now not impossible: “I must say, doing this has really helped my memory. I’m getting much better at it”.
