The Awesome Reason One Barber Is Offering Kids Free Back to School Haircuts
Courtney Holmes gives a buzz cut while a young customer reads about Babe Ruth (Photo: Globe Gazzette/Telegraph Herald)
Barbers are known for shaping hair — not minds.
But that’s all changed thanks to Courtney Holmes, a barber and dad of two in Iowa. Holmes has become a viral sensation ever since he attended a back-to-school event in Dubuque on Aug. 8 offering free haircuts to kids who agreed to read aloud from a book.
STORY: Barber Publicly Shames Misbehaving Kid With Old-Man Haircut
Dozens of kids took him up on the offer — and parents and community members are cheering his brilliant and effective idea to prompt kids to get their noses into a book and away from a video-game screen.
“The kids would come in, and I would say, ‘Go to the table and get a book you might like, and if you can’t read it, I’ll help you understand and we can read it together,’” Holmes told USA TODAY Network.
“To be honest, I was amazed,” he said. “The line started with four kids, and next thing I knew it was like 20 kids, all waiting for a haircut and eager to read.”
At the end of the event, called the Back to School Bash, several kids still remained waiting, so Holmes gave them vouchers for a free trim at the salon where he works, Spark Family Hair Salon in Dubuque.
STORY: Parents of Kindergartner Claim Discrimination Over Haircut
After a local article about the event focused on Holmes’ haircut-for-reading trade, it was picked up by other outlets before going crazy-viral on social media. Ever since, his colleagues at Spark have been deluged by calls from strangers trying to reach Holmes and thank him for his efforts to promote literacy.
“We have been receiving numerous phone calls of gratitude,” salon staffers wrote on Facebook. “We are humbled by the national outpour of love and honored to have Courtney as part of our team.”
The idea for the haircut-reading trade came from Anderson Sainci, a member of Dubuque Black Men Coalition, a community group Holmes also belongs to that connects families to social services and promotes literacy.
“We wanted to do something different at the Back to School Bash we have every year, so I asked Courtney if he would be up for giving haircuts if kids read from books,” Sainci tells Yahoo Parenting.
“Making sure kids read at grade level is an important goal of ours, because once kids fall behind, they’re at risk of dropping out of school as they get older,” he says. “Reading just 20 minutes a day can help kids catch up.”
Thanks to the popularity of the program in Dubuque and the support Sainci and Holmes have received from social media, they’ve decided to make haircuts-for-reading a regular event.
One Tuesday out of every month, Spark salon will give kids free haircuts from 4 to 6 p.m., Sainci says, as long as the kids agree to read aloud from one of the many books the salon is now beginning to stock while Holmes and the other haircutters work their magic.
“I just want to support kids reading,” Holmes told globegazette.com.
Please follow @YahooParenting on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest. Have an interesting story to share about your family? Email us at YParenting (at) Yahoo.com.
