Reading Corps Director Has Unique Background

Reliable. understanding, big smile, pencil-point tattoo.

Rice and beans, X Files, basketball, New York City.

Pratt Elementary’s Lillie David describes herself that way in a prose poem on her door.

Add missionary and scared of chickens, and you start to get a hint of what David is all about.

As the Washington Reading Corps director for Pratt, David recruits and trains volunteers to help kids improve their reading skills. She assumed that position this school year, but started working there last year through the federally funded AmeriCorps program, mostly tutoring kids.

“I like Pratt,” she said. “I was impressed by the kids. They are so kind-hearted.”

Although she’s thinking about becoming a teacher now, she wasn’t always.

David, 25, was raised on a cattle ranch 20 miles north of Kettle Falls and 20 miles south of the Canadian border.

She said she used to watch her dad collect eggs from the hens, which pecked him mercilessly for stealing their loot. Thus, from an early age, she was scared of chickens.

It’s a conservative area, she said, and, after high school, her devoted Mormon family wanted her to attend Brigham Young University. The idea, she said, was to “get her Mrs” - which, of course, means to find a husband.

But that was too soon for David to settle down. Instead, she choose to keep a promise she had made to herself years before.

David graduated with a bachelor’s degree in European studies and Spanish, and volunteered to become a missionary with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Soon, David was in New York City, seeking converts in Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan.

“New York City was an opportunity to meet so many different people,” she said. “I came back with a broader perspective on life.”

Because of her language skills, David worked with Spanish-speaking immigrants, who taught her to love rice and beans, “arroz con habichuelas,” she said in perfect Spanish.

She also learned of the abuses immigrants suffer, she said. Verbal and physical abuse and sexual harassment are commonplace, but the immigrants take it with the hope that their children will have a better life in America, she said.

One of the things she learned from living in New York was that people liked to talk to her. Strangers would open up and tell her all sorts of things, she said.

She uses that ability here to learn about and understand people.

“I’ve been very impressed by Lillie,” said Pratt Principal Steve Barnes. “To me, she’s one of the teachers on staff.”