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Idaho teacher uses AAE Grant to purchase books for young readers
posted by: Melissa | November 17, 2020, 08:25 PM   

Earlier this year, Melissa Hunt, an elementary educator at I.T. Stoddard Elementary School in Blackfoot, Idaho, applied for a COVID-19 Relief Grant to purchase books for her young readers. This is her reflection of the impact this funding had on her students.

 

This past spring when COVID-19 struck and everything shut down, including my school, it put many teachers into a tailspin trying to reach our students online. One of the biggest hardships was getting books into the hands of young children during this pandemic when libraries were closed. I used the grant money to buy books for the children. Some of the books are given to the children for their birthdays, but the majority of books are being used for Book Club.

 

We started the school year on a hybrid schedule. Then we went full time, then back to hybrid, and we are currently full time in school with some families opting to stay online full time.

 

Each month I hold a special Book Club with the children. They have a reading buddy (a stuffed animal) that they adopted at the beginning of the school year that gets to come to Book Club. They eat lunch in the classroom, and we spotlight a new book. We read it together and have activities that center around that book. They squeal with delight when they find out they get to take the book home and keep it forever in their home library. This gives them the opportunity to share it with their family and read it again and again.

 

The response from the children and parents has been very positive. In fact, the children can’t wait for the next Book Club. They frequently ask when they get to bring their reading buddy to school and share the next new book with them.

 

Thank you for helping me to instill a desire to read in each of my young scholars. They are loving it and having so many books to place in their homes makes a big difference.

 

The AAE Foundation National Teacher Scholarship and Classroom Grant Program is open to all full-time educators. Applications are considered twice-a-year on a competitive basis and evaluated by a volunteer review committee of educators. The program is now accepting scholarship and grant applications through the next deadline of March, 1, 2021. More details and application information are available aaeteachers.org/awards.

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