Bryan's House!

(Playground at Bryan's House)

Our day started out at 8am, because we had an hour commute to the facility from our home. In miles, it was maybe 30, but because of morning traffic, it took us a while to get there. The volunteer coordinator, Frances, greeted us. She was an incredible woman with a ton of spirit and spunk. It is great to have people like that in these roles because they really motivate a group. Frances told us about the history of Bryan’s House and the role that we would be playing this week. Bryan’s House was founded by two women Lydia Allen and Stephanie Held. Lydia was a mother of two and she contracted HIV through a blood transfusion. The doctors didn’t know what was wrong with her, because she was very ill through her first born child and continued to be very ill through the birth of her second child. Lydia eventually found out that she was HIV positive and that she had given the virus to her two children. Her husband was a Baptist pastor and not even the connections in the church could keep them actively involved. The family was ostracized for the virus and was not allowed to attend bible study or even church. Lydia’s husband was removed from his role as pastor and the family was asked to leave the church. In the mid to late 80’s HIV was something that people were very afraid of. Lydia started Bryan’s House as a means to support the families and children who were infected with HIV. Daycare centers did not want to work with the family, so she saw the immediate need. Stephanie was involved in the development because of her role as a nurse. Bryan’s House is named for Lydia’s second son Bryan, who was the first child in Dallas to die of AIDS. Eventually, Lydia past away and Stephanie was in charge of the organization. Lydia’s husband eventually remarried, surprisingly, even though he had two children with Lydia, he never contracted the virus. There is a book about their story, “Burden of a Secret.”

Today Bryan’s House continues to serve children who have HIV, but they also serve children who have other special needs. Not all of the children at Bryan’s House are special needs children. Some of them are there because their parents have HIV and it is a service to them. The families pay for the day care based on a sliding scale. The behind the scene workers were incredible! They have a grant writer, multiple development officers and social workers. The facility is very organized and very professional. To enter the building you have to be bussed in. Continually there is someone monitoring the classrooms through cameras in each one. There is a nursery, three toddler rooms, and a Pre-K room. Children do not move up until they have developed the skills specified for that room. Each classroom has an instructor and an assistant. All of the instructors have degrees in early childhood education or elementary education. They are incredible professionals that are essentially saints in my mind. They work very hard to ensure that the children are learning everything that they can while they are in school. The teachers have very high expectations for their students, special need or not. All children are treated the same with love and understanding.

As we walked into classrooms, we could not tell who had a special need and who did not. It was amazing to watch these multilingual children navigate through a lesson in primarily English. Our role in the classroom was to assist the teacher how every they needed us. We tried to split up so each student could have the opportunity to volunteer in every room. Everyone had great stories to tell at our family style dinner of spaghetti.