One of the most difficult challenges that a high school principal can take on is implementing a school wide literacy initiative. However, after reading about the “biblioburro” my challenges paled in comparison. However, I learned that I shared some commonalities with Luis Soriano, CNN Hero of the Week. For example, "There was a time when many people thought that I was going crazy." I know the feeling. Reading in a high school?

More commonalities include:

"The children have very few opportunities to go to secondary school. Many of our students came from countries with limited educational opportunities.

“There are [few] teachers that would like to teach in the countryside." Only the most dedicated and skilled teachers had the flexibility and requisite variety to thrive in a school with such a diverse, high-poverty, highly mobile, high-second-language population.

“At the start of his 17-year teaching career, Soriano realized that some students were having difficulty not just learning, but finishing their homework assignments.” Upon arriving at our school, the teachers told me “our students don’t come to school and when they do, they cannot read.”

“Most of the students falling behind lived in rural villages, where illiterate parents and lack of access to books prevented them from completing their studies.” The parents of many of our students had little or no education and were illiterate in their native language.

Quote of the Week: "For us teachers, it's an educational triumph, and for the parents [it's] a great satisfaction when a child learns how to read. That's how a community changes and the child becomes a good citizen and a useful person," Soriano said. "Literature is how we connect them with the world."