OCEAN CITY — March 1 was a silly day full of fun at Ocean City Primary School when members of the community went into classrooms with children’s books in their hands.
The message was simple, according to Principal Dr. Cathleen Smith: students realize “reading is cool” when they see the police and firefighters and all the other adults coming into their classes to read books to them.
“It’s, like, super cool,” she added.
Interim Superintendent of Schools Terrence Crowley, Mayor Jay Gillian and members of the Friends and Volunteers of the Ocean City Free Public Library were also among the guest readers.
That Friday was the culmination of Read Across America, a program started by the National Education Foundation to show youngsters the importance of reading. There were guest readers throughout the week, little tents set up for a “camp read” and then the special Read Across America Day with the adults reading in the classrooms.
The day culminated in an assembly in which all the kindergartners through third graders had competed for an ultimate prize — the chance to smoosh whipped-cream pies into their favorite teachers’ (or principal’s) faces as a reward for being the top readers in their classes.
“It gets kids excited about reading and I always say that if you can read, you can learn about anything,” Deepa McCabe, the Primary School librarian and computer science teacher, said about Read Across America.
“It empowers kids to get excited about something that will open doors for them forever,” she added.
“Reading is the key to everything. The more we get kids to read, the better off they will be, not only with reading, but with math and science and all the other stuff,” Crowley said. “We want to get to the position that kids love to read and want to read, so we have to model that for the kids and get them to understand that adults read.”
Crowley and the school district’s administrative staff invited a kindergarten class over to the district offices that morning to celebrate Read Across America Day.
“We wanted the kids to come into the office here because we never get to see kids,” he said about working in the administrative offices, “particularly with the kindergartners. Our staff is all ready to go.”
Scotty Keiluhn, executive assistant to the superintendent, said Principal Smith had sent a video to Crowley of all the kids at the Primary School “enjoying their camp read this week, so we thought it would be a great culminating event to have the kids in our office because they never come over here and we needed something happy for our Friday,” she said, laughing, noting it was fun for the kids and for the staff.
“We love kids,” she said. “I think it is positive for the kids at the Primary School to experience the district office … and see that we can be fun and silly and have a good time.”
Smith said the turnout of adult readers for Read Across America Day was “amazing.”
“They’re able to come in, contribute to the school, so it’s community involvement,” she said of the guest readers.
“You want everyone in the school. That’s what counts as community involvement,” Smith said. “Our kids get to see that reading is important for everybody.
“We had mystery readers all through the week. We had a father come in dressed as a hot dog and he read a hot dog book. We had someone come in dressed as an alien to make reading fun. The kids are like, ‘this is super cool,’” Smith said. “Then you had a mom who brought in cookies. They’re reading about cookies. And they’re like, that’s my friend’s mom. The kids are crawling up to read.”
She noted the special events also make the students feel important while they’re learning that reading is important.
“It speaks to the strength of the Ocean City community and how important the children are to the entire community and how the whole community thinks that reading is important,” the Linwood resident said.
By DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff
