Faith in Humanity: Stranger gives 5-year-old inspiring note to help with first day of school fears
May 14, 2015, 1:12 PM | Updated: 1:12 pm
Starting a new school can be terrifying — entering unfamiliar territory, feeling like an outsider and learning unknown information are just a few of the aspects to get used to.
Thanks to a stranger, one little girl can begin school with more confidence, the Huffington Post reported.
Ella Mitchell, 5, was riding a Seattle bus with her mother last month when she was expressing her concerns about learning how to read when she begins kindergarten in the fall.
A stranger, whose identity has not been made public, overheard her conversation and decided to hand Ella’s mother, Alaura Mae, a note to help boost the girl’s confidence.
“When you practice letters enough, and the sounds they make, they’ll start to work together and make sense, and then you’ll be reading. When you can read, you’ll know what EVERYTHING says. All the signs, all the names, all the books, writing is EVERYWHERE if you look. Soon you’ll be able to read books, and everything there is to know is in them! You’ll be able to find out whatever you want! It probably won’t be easy, but it won’t be hard forever. It’s going to be so exciting! Good luck!”
Mae, who was skeptical about the note at first and did not give it much thought, later got reconnected with the man after a mutual friend noticed one of her social media posts.
“Taking the bus in Seattle is always an adventure. There’s a lot of really creepy people out there,” she said in an interview with Yahoo News. “So somebody taking five minutes of their time to encourage my daughter was encouraging to me, too.”
The stranger admitted that he struggled with reading himself and wanted Ella to have a better experience.
“He said he was really glad that I looked at the note, because he was trying to respect our privacy but still wanted to share this message with Ella,” Mae said in an interview with Yahoo News. “He said he struggled a lot with learning to read as a kid, and remembers how frustrating it was and he didn’t want her to have the same frustrations.”
