In positive news today, Iowa barber Courtney Holmes is giving back to his community in a big way.
Holmes, who is part of the team at Spark Family Salon, gave out free haircuts to local kids if they read to him as part of the community’s Back-to-School Bash in Comiskey Park, the Des Moines Register reports.
“I just want to support kids reading,” Holmes, who set up shop at the second annual Back-to-School Bash in Comiskey Park, told the Telegraph Herald.
Holmes even helped children sound out words they’d never read before. Tayshawn Kirby, 9, read from Fats, Oils and Sweets, by Carol Parenzan Smalley and taught Holmes a little something; that the average person eats about “150 pounds of sugar each year.”
“It’s great. All the kids, they want to have a good haircut to go back to school,” Caitlin Daniels, the grade-level reading coordinator who also jumped in to help struggling readers, told the Herald. “They’re paying through reading.”
Holmes joins the likes of barber Reggie Ross, who last year took the TV and Internet out of his Royal Touch Barbershop in West Palm Beach, Florida, and replaced them with books. “The barbershop is based on men coming together, grooming each other to become better men, and I think books and education is a fundamental part of that,” Ross told WPTV.
What an excellent way of getting the kids ready for the school year.
