To quote myself:

Volunteer: I’m with New York Cares!

Teacher: Yeah it does.

Volunteer: What?

Teacher: ….we all do.

I finally finally got to do a New York Cares event. It’s nuts how fast the events fill up with volunteers. NYCares allows the busy, privileged New Yorker to productively absolve their guilt over their privilege and busy-ness  in short, rewarding sessions. Yesterday I participated in Bedtime Stories, which sounds creepy, but is just reading to and doing crafts with some kids at a rec center. My heart completely melted over littles Martin and Otto and Gus who insisted on reading NO GIRLS ALLOWED! and then proved to me their superior reading levels. Pictured above are our hand-wreaths, with required us to kind of accidentally draw all over our hands, in seemingly washable marker and then our Moms yelled at us and it was just really uncomfortable. I’m really really glad I did it and am totally going to do it again, perhaps even venturing BEYOND east 54th street to boroughs where kids aren’t already reading above grade level.