100 People Who Care Dinner Meeting
Renee Brown and Chrissy Patterson are pictured with the Knightly Reading book used this past school year as well as with the pet skunk each classroom used in their study.
This past Thursday, April 28, a group of shareholders in the 100 People Who Care initiative met at La Cascada in Arthur for an appreciation dinner for those who made the commitment of $200 for this year’s effort. 100 People Who Care is a fundraising arm of the District #305 Education Foundation which exists to support our schools and students. The Education Foundation has helped to fund the 1 to 1 initiative ensuring all high school students at ALAH have their own laptop computer, annually gives senior scholarships, has given up to $500 to teachers who have applied for grants for items to be used in their classrooms, and has helped to fund other educational experiences for our students all over the district.
This appreciation dinner was the culmination of this year’s fundraising for 100 People Who Care and we plan to begin a new effort this fall. Besides the appreciation dinner in the spring we will have other dinner meetings throughout the year with the hope that some of our teachers who have been recipients of grants will attend to share how they used their grant money.
The program for the dinner was provided by Renee Brown, district librarian, and Chrissy Patterson, Title 1 teacher at Atwood-Hammond. Renee has been in charge of implementing Knightly Reading all three years of this program with Chrissy coming on board with plans to head the program with the help of Renee and others this next school year. Five hundred dollar grants were given by the Education Foundation to each of the grade schools in the district, Arthur, Atwood-Hammond and Lovington. The Foundation board was very happy to have them share information about Knightly Reading at the dinner.
Knightly Reading is billed as a family literacy event and that is one of the keys to its success, it is very much a program that involves the whole family. This year’s book was “A Boy Called Bat,” and 500 students and their families across the district received a book and a daily reading guide. Students were asked to read the book, answer trivia questions and share with their families. Parents were encouraged to read to younger children as these books were distributed to kindergarten through 5th grade. Bat (the main character) has a pet skunk and each classroom had one too (not real of course) and all classrooms kept a pet journal about their skunk. Teachers were later asked to provide feedback as to the activities and lessons they used in the classroom. There are two more books in this series and some classrooms went on to read the other books as well.
Renee also shared information about the recent yearbook digitization project for which the District #305 Education Foundation also provided funds. There is an accompanying article in this paper that outlines what this project is about and how yearbooks from all our schools have been made available digitally and online. A lot of information is provided about the history of our schools and yearbooks available in this manner will hopefully be a great resource for those in the future to use in a variety of ways.
The District #305 Education Foundation is very pleased to be able to provide initiatives such as Knightly Reading and yearbook digitization to name just two to our students, faculty, staff and the community. With the support of all of you we hope to be able to continue to do these things and more. Information about the Foundation can be found at u-knighted.org, or on our facebook page.
