This summer, as always, we took time to do home visits for some of our Vero Beach Elementary families. A big change was that so many of our teachers and staff wanted to come along. We truly miss our students over the break and this gives us a chance to go and see them right in their homes. We packed my truck up with books, flash cards, games, and some care kits that were put together by one of our local churches, and then we headed out each day. The students we were able to visit were so excited when we showed up with the science-based books, they literally grabbed them out of our hands! However, it left us feeling a little deflated after we visited home after home and realized that so many of our students do not own any books, and many lack transportation and means to get to the public library. It was obvious right away that a long-term goal of Vero Beach Elementary needed to be tied around literacy. We needed to create a movement that would not only have our students embracing reading at school, but beyond the four walls of VBE. To create a lifelong love of literacy, we needed to go BIG!
Then I had an amazing gift. The gift of another inspired leader.
I went to the National Association of Elementary School Principals convention later that summer and was memorized as a result of a project that was done by Todd Nesloney, principal and lead learner of a title-one school in Texas. It gave me a vision for our school, I immediately tweeted out that I simply needed $100,000 to create the most aggressive literacy initiative that Florida has ever seen. Not 10 minutes later did I get an email from my social media savvy Superintendent, Dr. Mark Rendell, stating that Vero Beach Elementary qualified for a state grant that would make my lofty dream an attainable one, to create a literacy explosion at our school.
Over the course of the summer I connected with representatives from Scholastic to put together this incredible surprise. They were amazing! We kept the event a secret, even the teachers were unaware of the event. The result, we transformed our media center into a huge book distribution area. Every single student entered and watched as we dropped a giant curtain and revealed that they were going to get a chance to select 11 books each to take home and keep forever.
The videos below give just a glimpse of the magic that took place. After our students had the experience, Scholastic helped completely break down the student book distribution and brought in an entirely new event, in which we surprised each classroom teacher with a $500 shopping spree to boost their classroom libraries. Building a love of literacy from the inside, out.
While planning for the event, I could have never imagined the profound impact this would make on our families. One parent came to visit me with her children and shared that for the first time, she was able to do a read-aloud with her family because her son picked a book that was written in Spanish. The tears streaming down her face were no match for the pride in her voice, she was given the opportunity to actively participate in her child's education. This will impact me forever as a leader.
Others shared stories of how their children were "missing" only to be found hiding in their closet with a flashlight and book, reading the latest Dogman series. Others exclaimed joy as the students chose to read over playing video games, arguing with siblings, or creating a mess in their houses. One grandparent shared a picture with me of her granddaughters cleaning a special area of their room for their coveted, precious books, the beginning of their own personal libraries. The magic of the event is that every single child was given an opportunity for a positive childhood memory to be created, tied around literacy. My hope is that it not only makes them love reading now, but that they will take this memory into their adult lives and it will encourage them to create "pixie-dust" moments around literacy for their own children.
"All you need is faith, trust, and a little pixie-dust" -Tinkerbell
Little does our VBE family know... this is only 2 parts of a 4 part literacy explosion that will continue throughout this school year!!!
TCPalm Article By Laurence Reisman
