Student support
Creating an explosive love of reading
Digging into a book bag she helped stock for Kids West, M.E. Callaghan Intermediate School student Sky MacLean pulls out a Franklin title.
“I read this one,” she notes. MacLean and fellow members of her school’s charity committee provided a list of some of the books they remember from their preschool years, and those books became part of the order placed on behalf of the Kids West Family Resource Centre. On Friday, the charity committee greeted staff, parents and children from Kids West and presented them with a big supply of book bags, each filled with 15 books suitable for children ages three to five. Some of the students even volunteered to read for the pre-schoolers, prompting Kids West executive director Jessica Dorgan-Trail to propose followup reading activities between committee members and her pre-school group. Students join the charity committee at the start of the school year and hold fundraisers for various causes. This is the first time they used some of their proceeds to supply books to the Kids West Family Resource Centre. The new partnership was dubbed T.N.T – Teens n’ Toddlers, creating an explosive love of literacy. Grade 9 student Mary Fran Williams pointed out it’s not the first support they’ve provided to Kids West.
“We adopt a family at Christmas time through Kids West and buy gifts for them.
We don’t get to see who the family is, but that’s alright. We don’t want to see who the family is.”
When it’s pointed out they won’t normally get to see who’s enjoying the books the charity committee supplied, she replied, “As long as they are in good hands and the kids like to read, that’s the main thing.” Some of the members of the committee, including Williams, recalled attending Kids West activities in their preschool years.
“I can remember asking, ‘Are we going to Kids West today, are we going to Kids West?’” The T.N.T. partnership was also supported by two other entities. Kent Building Supplies in Bloomfield provided the bags and the P.E.I. Literacy Alliance provided family literacy tools all of which the charity committee packed along with the books.