Reilly Schwenebraten and Erica Jeremy love reading, and they love teaching children to read, which explains their enthusiasm for organizing the Wocott Street School Book Fair and PARP Fest.
PARP stands for Pick A Reading Partner.
Schwenebraten is a Pre-K teacher at the Le Roy school,l and Jeremy is a teaching assistant.
"We actually spend the whole month focused on reading and activities," Jeremy said. "Then, to culminate the month, we have this event for an hour and a half on Friday night to bring the kids in a lot of free activities."
There is dancing, games, face painting, pizza, and other snacks for the kids. The student bookstore is also open.
"Our theme this year was 'Rock Out With A Good Book,' said Schwenebraten. "All of our activities have been based around music. So on Mondays, it was Move It Monday, where we were dancing throughout the day. Tuesday was Name That Tune Tuesday, where we'd play a song, and they'd have to guess it. On Wednesdays, we would dress up in different themes. Then, on Thursday, we had guest readers. So we drew in people from the community to read to our kids in lunch, and then on Fridays, we would all wear our PARP shirts."
Why is reading important to you?
Jeremy: "Reading is important to me because it's the basic fundamental of everything you will ever learn, whatever career you want to go into, whatever job you want to have, whether you're reading a book, whether you're reading song lyrics, whether you're reading a map, whether you're reading recipes, you've got to have that knowledge to be able to go anywhere in life."
Schwenebraten: "Reading is important to me, because it brings a lot of memories for me, just with my family and how important reading was for my mom, and what I want to bring to my kids, and obviously what I bring to my students, and just like Erica said that it's the basis of all skills that you need for life, is to read. So finding ways to bring enjoyment and allow children to have enjoyment through reading is really important, and so motivating them to do that is our goal this month."
Erica Jeremy, a teaching assistant, and Reilly Schwenebraten, pre-K teacher.
Photo by Howard Owens.
