Man retires after helping generations of students as a HOSTS volunteer

BROWNSVILLE - Michael Bilicki remembers struggling with his reading skills as a child.

By the time he was in third grade, he was in special education classes where he remained until he was 18 before joining the U.S. Army and serving in Vietnam as a small arms repairman.

That's one of the reasons he's spent the past 15 years as a volunteer for HOSTS (Help One Student To Succeed), working with mainstreamed elementary schoolchildren at Wilson and Bowie Elementary schools who were having difficulty reading.

"It's just the smiles," said Bilicki, who just turned 63. "At the end of the school year, there are letters they send out to all the mentors."

Bilicki has ended his work as a volunteer at Bowie Elementary School. He and his wife, Janie, who also just retired from her job as a schoolteacher, plan to do some traveling. But he reflected fondly on his years helping young children learn to read.

"I would pick out a table for that day and I would sit there the whole three hours," he said. "I would go in at 9 o'clock to noon. And I would have three grade levels."

When a student read a book about Paul Bunyan and Babe the blue ox, he told the child he was originally from Minnesota with the same kind of terrain where the folk hero has had many of his storied adventures.

"This year the third-graders would go to the map box and pick out a state and read about the state, and we'd try to do stuff like that," he said. "I would try to pick out states that I've been through and been at, and tell them a little bit more about the state than what's on the card."

Bilicki said the children would be tested at the beginning of the year and then again at the end. If there was no improvement, they would still move to the next grade level but would continue their tutoring with HOSTS members.

"The program is basically set up for a half hour per student," he said. "I would have two first graders the first hour, and the three things are reading, spelling, and extra activities. They basically will have reading first, or it depends on how you want to work with them. If they're falling behind on spelling words, sometimes I pull out their spelling words and have them write them."

Although Bilicki's work as a HOSTS volunteer has come to an end, he's leaving behind a legacy with Bowie Elementary. Recently, he's painted murals on many of the campus walls, including an image of bobcats, the school's mascot. More recently, he's painted educational murals of the cycle of water falling as rain and then evaporating, and the action of electricity from a battery to a light bulb. He's now painting his last mural of a caterpillar evolving through its pupa stage into a butterfly.