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I said goodbye to my kids the other day.

As with most farewells, there were tears and hugs, even some laughs. It was sad knowing that I would never again see their sweet faces on a regular basis--if at all.

But time goes by, situations change, people pass through your life and out again--a lesson they perhaps just learned and one I certainly relearned.

I am not a parent. “My kids” are the 5- and 6-year-olds I read to for the last year at Magnolia Avenue Elementary School as part of The Times’ Reading by 9 program. Kindergarten was over for them at the year-round school, so it was on to vacation and then first grade.

I discovered how rewarding reading to little children can be during my post-college, “what am I going to do with the rest of my life” days. I was considering a library career, so I got a job at the Whittwood Branch Library in Whittier to find out what working in the stacks is really like. One of my duties was reading during the weekly story time. The children’s response to my offerings is one of my fondest memories of that experience.

Also, volunteerism had been on my mind ever since my minister used to preach it from the pulpit. So when Reading by 9 started, it seemed like a natural fit.

The program offers two choices for service: tutoring individual children or reading aloud to whole classes. I was willing to do either, but was assigned to read to a Magnolia class.

The Times provided training. A woman with extensive storytelling experience gave us many useful tips, such as changing your tone of voice to fit the dialogue and asking the children questions about the story as it unfolds.

So, armed with that knowledge and my own experience, off I went.

As with many suburbanites, the closest I usually get to the inner city--outside of downtown--is driving by on the freeway. I must admit that when I got my assignment, I thought about the teacher hit by a stray bullet in a South-Central school’s library several years ago.

And my school is in the Pico-Union district, which tends to be accompanied by the terms “gang-infested” and “drug-plagued”--and more recently “Rampart scandal”--when in the news.

But what I found was a well-maintained campus of bright classrooms, energetic children, a bustling playground and dedicated teachers. In many ways, it was just like thousands of other schools across the country.

I also found more familiarity with English than I had expected. I had figured that my kids would probably be from poor immigrant families and not have heard much besides Spanish at home. I envisioned using simple books in which I would basically point to objects and give their English names.

Wrong.

These kids knew surprising amounts of English when the year began and a lot more when it ended. There were times when the teacher would translate a word or phrase that I said, but for the most part we communicated effectively in English. They certainly knew how to say, “I like it,” about books I read to them, or “I love you” as I prepared to leave after a visit.

They also could recognize by sight some of the words in the books; and from the comments each made in a special notebook they gave me at our final meeting last month, I know they can write.

The Los Angeles Unified School District has been battered repeatedly by stories about low test scores, dilapidated buildings, lack of textbooks, a high school being built on unsafe land. That is all true, but if my class is any indication, there’s still a lot of learning going on.

And not just among the students. In a good pedagogical relationship, both teacher and pupil learn, as educators have been saying for centuries.

Besides getting a new view of inner-city life, I learned quite a few Spanish words and phrases, from Que es eso? (What is that?) to lluvia (rain) to Hasta la semana que viene (See you next week).

Some of my language lessons had their comical elements.

When I was reading to the class about Penguin Pete, a mischievous bird who lives in Antarctica, a couple of children kept pointing at the ice and saying (or so I thought) “yellow.” Well, the only yellow thing in that picture of ice and penguins and sky was the birds’ beaks. “No,” I said, pointing to the bills, “these are yellow.” But the kids were insistent. I finally turned to the teacher, Andrea Giacusa, who had been busy with other work, and asked if what sounded like yellow meant something in Spanish. She smiled and said, “Oh, yes, hielo means ‘ice.’ ”

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Then there was the time I decided to try reading a bilingual book about an English-speaking girl and a Spanish-speaking nina who become friends. I don’t speak Spanish, but I generally know how to pronounce it.

Things seemed to be going fine until I read this phrase: “Me gustan tus zapatos marrones” (“I like your brown shoes”). To my befuddlement, the whole class laughed. Turns out marron means “brown” in Spain and elsewhere (including Argentina, where Giacusa has roots). But in Mexico and Central America--from which most of these kids’ families hail--the most common word for brown is cafe, literally “coffee.”

A bilingual co-worker of mine speculated that the kids thought I was saying marranos (“pigs”). I’d laugh too if someone said, “I like your pig shoes.” But after asking them the next week, I concluded that they just didn’t recognize the word. It was as though I had said, “I like your gobbledygook shoes.”

Like most parents, I felt protective toward my kids too, perhaps overly so. One night I was preparing for the next day’s visit by going over a book I had chosen mainly for its colorful pictures. As I read more carefully, I realized that the plot about a class trip into the jungle involved a goofy-looking boa constrictor swallowing each child one by one until the clueless teacher finally noticed, grabbed the snake by the tail and shook all the kids out unharmed.

Hmm. Could this provoke nightmares in tender young minds? Or is a little scare, followed by a happy ending, good for building self-confidence? I decided not to risk it but got some interesting reactions when I later put the question to colleagues. The women tended to express horror at the idea of kindergartners hearing such a tale, while the men thought it wouldn’t hurt a bit.

So there was no jungle story for my kids, but we went to lots of interesting places together nonetheless.

We planted trees with Johnny Appleseed. Frolicked with dinosaurs. Sailed the sea. Sang some songs.

It continues to amaze me that in this cyber-age of special effects and seemingly endless ways to sate our senses with high-tech razzle-dazzle, a simple story told by a real person can still hold children in thrall.

There’s nothing quite like seeing fresh, eager faces gazing up with undivided attention as you open the world to them through that exceedingly low-tech tool: a book.

At the beginning of the program, I thought, “Well, how much good is my reading aloud to them going to do, anyway? The teacher reads to them. Why do they need me?”

But apparently, having an outsider come in each week to share the wonder of books can make a very big impression on little children. Giacusa told me they looked forward to my visits eagerly, and when I knocked on the door, I sometimes heard cries of “Mr. Bob, Mr. Bob.”

Like the learning process itself, the excitement goes both ways too. One day while proofreading pages at The Times as part of my job as a copy editor, I noticed a story about California First Lady Sharon Davis visiting a school in Pico-Union.

And there, to my surprise, standing by Davis in a photo, was cute little Carmen, big as life, and some of the other children in my class. It turned out Davis had visited Giacusa’s room.

“These are my kids!” I proudly told every co-worker I could collar.

So kids, I hope in my small way I helped nurture a love of reading that will enrich your lives for years to come. I know you’ve enriched mine.

I’ll always remember you, and I hope you remember me, too, as you become better and better readers and, I trust, happy and fulfilled adults.

Yo tambien los quiero, ninos.

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To volunteer for Reading by 9, call (213) 625-6080.