Noted author and radio personality Garrison Keillor once said “A book is a gift you can open again and again.” Central Elementary School will soon be able to purchase a lot of those special gifts thanks to a generous gift from Woodmen Life.
On Thursday, representatives from Woodmen Life presented school officials with a check for $1,000 to help the school with its reading program for students.
“We want to get involved in small communities and small schools like this,” said Mark Vance, a representative with Woodmen Life.
The money for the donation came from the community membership of Woodmen Life, Vance said.
School officials were excited about the donation and what it means for the students.
“We’re going to put that money into our K-2 literacy program,” Central Elementary Principal Terry Morley said. “We have a big literacy initiative we are working on this year. It’s a goal we are focusing on as a system.”
When the school began to work on putting the initiative together, Morley said Assistant Principal Letha Carr decided to see if there were any community grants available to help with funding for the project.
“These fine folks stepped up to help us out,” Morley said of the Woodmen Life group.
Carr was excited to receive the donation.
“This is going to go a long way to helping us out,” she said. “This will also include any supplies the students will need for the program.”
One of the reasons literacy and reading are such an important focus is because studies have shown that students who spend more time reading perform better in all academic areas, Carr said. Reading helps to improve both vocabulary and comprehension.
If a student reads 20 minutes each day, over the course of a school year they will have read approximately 1,800,000 words, Carr said.
“Reading makes such a difference,” Carr said. “We try to get in 20 minutes of reading with each child every single day.”