Earl Oxford students eager to get books as part of Adopt a School program
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 24/09/2016 (3562 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
The students at Earl Oxford School have high hopes for how many books can fit in their library.
The school has been chosen for Indigo’s 2016 Adopt a School program, a three-week fundraising campaign aiming to get books into the hands of kids who need them most.
“We are so excited here,” said Karlyn Leslie, teacher librarian at Earl Oxford School. “It’s so nice that people in the community are supporting us. We have a lot of students here that are from low-income families and they don’t have access to books at home, so we really rely on our library to support them as readers.”
Coles in Shoppers Mall is collecting the donations on behalf of the school, which will receive 100 per cent of the donations.
“We actually took a small group of kids down to Coles on Wednesday to see the display … They all had filled out wish lists of what they wanted to see in the library and Coles pulled all those books and made a display,” Leslie said. “When we walked past it their faces just lit up … it was kind of an overwhelming feeling, their eyes were so big, they just couldn’t believe it.”
In order to be adopted by the program, a school needs to qualify as a “high-needs” elementary school, with a library budget of less than $30 per student a year.
Earl Oxford School’s library budget is only about $4 per student a year, Leslie said.
“Out of all the schools that applied, I think we were one of the lowest (schools),” Leslie said. “I think this has really raised awareness within our own school as well. We’re servicing a big area, the school population is growing every year by 30 or 40 students, so we really need to look at promoting literacy and making sure we’re putting good books into kids’ hands.”
So far, 47 books have been donated, Leslie said, but the students have set their goals high.
“The kids want to reach 600 books, so not quite double the population — we have 363 students,” Leslie said. “Our original goal was one book for each student, that would be huge.”
There are a lot of picture books on the students’ wish list as well as books needed to complete series the library has, Leslie said, adding that she hopes to see a lot of young adult books as well.
“We’re really focusing on adolescent readers because statistics show that kids sort of start to drop off reading in the adolescent age, so we’re really trying to target those kids and give them a big voice in what books are coming to the library,” Leslie said.
Donations can be made at Coles and online until Oct. 9. For every $20 online donation, the equivalent value of two books, the Reading Foundation will donate a third book free.
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