There has been a major push in our schools to get students to read on a third-grade level by the time they reached the end of third grade.
Rossville Elementary School has taken that one stop farther toward obtaining that goal by implementing a “Reader’s Challenge” by bringing in “Celebrity Readers” to talk to elementary school students.
Wednesday morning, they had a very special guest come in, Dr. Katie Jenner, who is the Indiana Secretary of Education in the State of Indiana. Dr. Jenner is in her fourth year with the state and absolutely had a great time with two group of students. First, was a group of third and fourth graders, while the second group was group of kindergartners and first-graders.
“I absolutely love visiting schools are the state and celebrating the work happening in our schools,” said Dr. Jenner. “We have so much good things happening and just the opportunity to elevate that and point to specific teachers, specific schools that are making it happen. It’s a powerful opportunity that we should do more of across our country.”
The Reader’s Challenge program is under the direction of Assistant Principal Mike Faegens, who talks about the program.
“We’ve invited several members from the community, from the area, from the state and we’ve even had a couple of Zoom calls from outside the country reading books to our kids,” said Faegens. “We just wanted to show our kids how important reading is,”
Faegens said before the day started Wednesday, they read 106 books to their kids.
Dr. Jenner read from one of her favorite books called, “Maybe” with the main idea behind the book was to tell students who their futures might be when they grow up and how they could contribute to our country.
Faegens said they gave their students challenges and marks to make for very special treats.
“We set a goal of 25,” said Faegens. “If they reached 50, (Elementary School Principal) Mr. (Chad) Dennison and I were going to do a song and dance from Dr. Suess and if they hit 75, we were going to get pies thrown in our face. Tomorrow (Thursday) we’re going to get pies in our face.”
Dr. Jenner is from the southern Indiana town of Jefferson, which is about as far south as you can be in the state and still be in Indiana. It’s located near the Ohio River. She first became the Department of Education head in January of 2021.
Dr. Jenner added they want to do everything possible to make sure kids can read.
“That includes not only making our teachers have the science of reading training and our schools have that support but making sure our parents and families understand and how important they are in this vision as well to read to their kid,” said Dr. Jenner.
Dr. Jenner was a special statement about the school and community before she left.
“This is a place where students enjoy coming,” she said. “They wanted to tell me about what they loved about their teacher and what their favorite parts about the school are. I’d say Rossville is a great community to live and raise your kids in because the people really care.”