Millions to celebrate literacy with 'Ladybug Girl and the Bug Squad'
From Staff Reports
education@newnan.com
On Oct. 4, people across the country will read the children’s book ‘Ladybug Girl and the Bug Squad’ by David Soman and Jacky Davis in support of Jumpstart’s mission to “work towards the day that every child in America enters school prepared to succeed.”
Locally, Read for the Record participants and coordinators are planning to share the book with more than 11,000 youngsters.
In 2011, 2.2 million people nationwide participated in Jumpstart’s Read for the Record.
In Coweta County, Read for the Record is sponsored through a partnership between United Way and Central Educational Center’s Teacher Pipeline program.
Teacher Pipeline began the event in 2007 as a service learning project, and 54 high school interns read to 503 students that year.
Over the course of time and with the help of United Way’s Paige Edeburn, the project has consistently grown to include over 300 volunteers – Pipeline interns, grandparents and parents, firefighters, Phi Delta Kappa members, Coweta Ferst Foundation members and Mercer University professors and students.
In 2011, local volunteers read to more than 11,000 children in public elementary schools, private schools, childcare centers, public libraries and bookstores in Coweta County.
“Our Teacher Pipeline Interns have been preparing for the event and will be out in the schools again this year,” said Dr. Susan Mullins, director of the Pipeline program. Media specialists in our elementary schools are organizing other volunteers to assist interns so that all classes will have the chance to have a guest reader.
“We know that our effort in the largest effort in the metropolitan Atlanta area and one of the largest cooperative efforts in the state,” added Mullins, who coordinates the Coweta County School System’s campaign. “We hope to meet our goal of reading to 11,000-plus children.”
For more information, visit http://www.jstart.org/campaigns/read-record .
