WINDHAM – A sheriff, a state senator and a professional storyteller were among the 26 adults who read aloud to students at the Manchester School as part of Literacy Day on Dec. 19.
The event, which was spearheaded by Walter Lamb of the Presumpscot Masonic Lodge No. 70 in Windham, featured public readings, book swaps and a bike raffle.
Every Manchester School student had at least one ticket submitted to the raffle for eight children’s bicycles. But those students who kept reading logs, indicating that they read outside of school during the 10 days preceding Literacy Day, were able to submit an extra raffle ticket.
“We are encouraging literacy through this program of bikes for books,” Lamb said. “We encourage the children to read, and in turn we give them bicycles.
“You have to learn how to read in order to get along in this world,” Lamb said.
The Masons purchased the children’s bikes at Walmart (which contributed $75 toward each purchase), and donated them to the Literacy Day raffle.
According to teacher Deb Ledoux, approximately a quarter of Manchester School students participated in the voluntary program. Ledoux, who sat on the committee that arranged Literacy Day, said that the point of the program was not primarily to lure students into extracurricular reading through bike raffles, but rather to demonstrate that high-achieving adults read.
“I’d like to say that that wasn’t the huge dangling carrot,” Ledoux said, referring to the bikes. “I think the message really was to become a successful person, you need to be a life-long learner.”
Cumberland County Sheriff Kevin Joyce, and state Rep. Tom Tyler and professional storyteller Susan Dries, among others, read aloud to students throughout the course of the day.
According to Principal Cindy Curtis, the Manchester School and the Masons may try to do Literacy Day in an even “bigger way” next year.
“This is just the first time,” Curtis said, “and it’s certainly turned out to be more than we ever expected, with the number of people that want to participate and the number of bicycles that were available.”
Students at the Manchester School in North Windham celebrated Literacy Day last Thursday by welcoming a number of special guests who shared with them favorite books and storytelling. Local storyteller Susan Dries shared the folk tale of Tatterhood with students in the Manchester School library after lunch.
Fourth-graders in Carol Otley’s classroom vie to answer a question posed by Donna Stephen, a former principal at Windham Primary School, who had just finished reading, “The Scallop Christmas,” to them.
State Sen. Gary Plummer of Windham, a former longtime teacher in the Bonny Eagle school district, gets back in the act by reading to fourth-graders in Donna Morton’s class at Manchester School.
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