This week, Mr Holmes has been offering Dubuque youngsters a free cut as part of a local back-to-school initiative. I want to put a book in their hands, rather than have them in front of a computer’.
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“I have a two-year-old and a three-year-old”.
“The only book I read as a child was the Bible, and the books we had at school”.
With the vocabulary of these teenagers becoming more diminished as their reading levels drop as well as the impact being felt across the schooling of the students, keeping them interested in reading and continually reading is a task that one person has taken upon themselves in a way that gives back to the work they’ve done. “But 50 per cent of these kids are struggling to read”.
Holmes, a father of two, said he took the day off from his job at Spark Family Hair Salon to set up a booth in a crowded room filled with nonprofits and community organizers, part of an annual community event that helps children and parents prepare for the school year.
St. Mark Youth Enrichment, a 25-year-old organization dedicated to homework help, literacy, and creativity, donated some of the books during the event.
Already, people have sent books to the salon to support the program, and Holmes hopes to develop it into a monthly event, telling the news outlet, “I’m going to keep this going”. “All the kids, they want to have a good haircut to go back to school…They’re paying through reading”. She was very excited about the initiative, calling it a creative exchange between giving the kids a haircut for the new school year and having them “pay” through reading.
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And now the 45-year-old is considering turning this one-off scheme in to a regular thing.
