March/April 2008
Practitioners in Action: Envisioning Standard 10
Read-to-Feed at the Olive-Mary Stitt School
Drop a pebble in a pond and what happens? The rings of that impact ripple and extend out into the larger body of water. Last fall, students at Olive-Mary Stitt School (O-MS) made their own impact in the sea of world hunger by raising $7,213 for Heifer International, a nonprofit organization that provides livestock to families living in poverty.
Read-to-Feed is a reading promotional/service learning project affiliated with Heifer International. During a nine-week period, students in Kindergarten through Grade 5 obtained pledges from family and friends for their at-home reading. Students and teachers alike were dedicated readers who not only raised money to purchase livestock for families in need, but also expanded their global awareness as they learned about the geography, people and cultures in other parts of the world.
| Getting Started
As you would expect in the library, it all began with a story – the story of a young girl from Uganda named Beatrice. In the picture book, Beatrice’s Goat by Paige McBrier and Lori Lohstoeter, a young girl’s dream to go to school is fulfilled when her family receives a goat from Heifter International.
The goat provides milk to improve the diets of Beatrice and her 5 younger siblings as well as additional milk to sell to neighboring villagers. With the money earned, Beatrice’s dream to attend school becomes a reality. Why Read-to-Feed? Why did we bring Read to Feed to Olive? Suzy was inspired by the June 2006 issue of Knowledge Quest which was dedicated to the concept of adding a tenth information literacy standard to the nine that had been established for many years. Standard 10 looks beyond teaching children how to access information, organize it, evaluate it and synthesize it to create new understanding. Standard 10 suggests that we also have a responsibility to provide students with opportunities to apply what they learn to real life situations where they can respond in a socially just and humane way. Last spring, our School Board adopted a new Strategic Vision 2020. This document called for a curriculum that includes global awareness and service learning. Reflecting on Standard 10 and the Strategic Vision, we felt Read to Feed was a perfect fit! |
Heifer's Mission to End Hunger
Heifer envisions… Heifer’s mission is… Heifer's strategy is… Heifer’s History |
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The Impact During the nine-week period, we kept the momentum going by reading about other families whose lives were changed by the gift of an animal. Read-to-Feed Curriculum Guides developed by the University of Denver, provided suggestions for integrating health, science and social studies lessons as well. Our initial goal was to earn $500 to purchase a heifer; however, as the pledge money began to dribble in, we continued to purchase additional animals. Each new purchase was announced over the PA during the school’s morning announcements. Students applauded in their classrooms with the acquisition of each new animal. The animals were charted on a map of the world in our Commons. In the end, our students earned enough money to purchase a “gift ark” – two of every kind of animal Heifer provides. As a culminating activity, Wendy Davis, a local Heifer volunteer spoke to our students about her travels to Romania with Heifer. The children were honored with Heifer’s Ark Plaque in recognition for their outstanding reading and their effort to end world hunger “two-by-two.” |
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Participating in Read to Feed gave our students the opportunity to look outside their own world. So often they don’t have exposure to what daily life is like in other countries and they don’t understand that basic needs are not being met everywhere. As children learned about families in need they were motivated to make a difference. One student brought in $10 he had been saving for a video game. He said, “If kids don’t have milk or if they can’t go to school, I don’t need a video game.” That pebble will leave rings so big that he cannot even imagine the lasting impact. |
The O-MS donation is a gift that will have a lasting impact on villages abroad because the families who receive an animal are required to “pass on the gift” by donating the animal’s offspring to other families in need. The gift goes on and on. What impact did the outside reading have on our students? Reading logs indicate over 6,400 books were read during the nine-week period. Beyond that, the students’ enthusiasm for service learning, along with their newly developed understanding of other cultures and their increased global awareness is a lasting gift that, like the pebble in the pond, will extend far beyond this single experience.
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Suzy Rabbat is the Library/Media Director of Olive-Mary Stitt School located in Arlington Heights, Illinois, a suburb northwest of Chicago. Diane Wood is Assistant Principal at O-MS. The school has an enrollment of 540 students in Kindergarten through Grade 5. |
