Very quickly, he began to perceive needs that weren't being met in his students. "The children were hungry to become readers," he says. "But they couldn't even take a book out from the library because there were too few books, books were too precious." He felt he had been given a front-row seat at the start of a tragic cycle. "I would see hope in their eyes, but I'd leave there thinking 'You are gonna grow up, and people are gonna complain about you.' We expect kids to better themselves, but we don't give them what they need to do it."