Read Across America Celebration on March 2nd

Alli Getchell, Editor

On March 2, the Hawthorne High School Media Center held a celebration for Read Across America, also known as Dr. Seuss’s birthday. Read Across America is a program that thousands of schools, libraries, and community centers participate in to bring kids, teens, and books together.

Students in the Lincoln Middle School and Hawthorne High School ARCH/Life Skills programs have been working for weeks to conduct a school-wide event that would create social connections through literature. The ARCH/Life Skills students of HHS have written, illustrated, and published their own books and read from them during this event. HHS ARCH/ Life Skills students involved in the event were Ronald Duarte, Ricky Oyola, Jeremy Oyola, Shayla Libbrecht, Sarah Christensen, Chris Simmermon, and Peter Mooney.

“The educational objective is for the students to socialize through literature and reading. Reading is not just reading alone. We can socialize and interact with people through reading,” says Anna Maria Fasciana. “What I want [the Life Skills students] to get out of this is for them to get out of their shells. I think a lot of [Life Skills] students tend to shut themselves out. Sometimes they don’t talk to many other students. This event is another way to interact with other students.” She says when asked about the event and her students.

Principle Daniel LaGrone added, “The whole presentation of this event is outstanding and it takes reading out of the classroom, and into an interactive setting.”

All of this was accomplished with the help of HHS teacher Anna Maria Fasciana and classroom aids/paraprofessionals Kimberly Griffin and Hayley Wright. The Lincoln Middle School group was headed by teacher Katie Huffman.

Not only that, but they each created 7 stations for all students to enjoy. These stations included, a literature scavenger hunt, a photo booth, a craft table for making bookmarks, a literature-themed game table and more. In addition to that, there was literature-themed snacks like, Thing 1 and Thing 2 cupcakes and Green Eggs & Ham pretzels.

Ms. Kimberly Griffin added, “One of the most impressive aspects of this event is that the students created all of the decorations, and prepared all of the themed snacks.”