How an organized read-in is reaching out
An African-American read-in was held in the Taggart Student Center last Monday in honor of Black History Month. But what most students aren’t aware of is how this second annual read-in is reaching off campus.
Two hundred communicative disorder students who are members of the National Student Speech Language Hearing group sponsor what is what their faculty adviser, Sonia Manuel-Dupont, calls “a service learning project that is the perfect way to help us give something back.”
The students travel through Cache Valley to schools and libraries promoting multiculturalism by sharing books to children from pre-school up to eighth grade. The group hopes the books will teach the children about accepting people who are different from them. Last year, 11 different schools and libraries were visited.
The student group hopes to do the same this year and have already visited Summit Elementary, Edith Bowen Laboratory School and Cache Valley Learning Center.
Edith Bowen’s librarian, Vaughn Larson, said the schools are excited to have the students come each year.
“The children enjoy listening to the stories and doing the activities,” Larson said. “The presentations are always very well planned out and the kids love working with the college students. It is a nice addition to African-American month.”
Because the students meet with so many children on different levels, they choose books tailored to the specific age groups.
For example, when the students are with the older children they share a book called, “Martin’s Big Words” about the words Martin Luther King used during his work. It explains that some of the “big” words Martin used don’t mean as much as some of the “little” words he would use like ‘love’ or ‘dream.’ A class discussion is then held to talk about how the kids feel about what those words mean.
The younger kids are introduced to a story called, “Sister Anne’s Hands.” It is a story about an African-American nun who is teaching in an all-Caucasian school. The book explains how children in the book come to discover that this woman with hands that are pink on one side and dark on the other, is not that much different from them.
The communicative disorder students then help the younger children pick out construction paper and trace around their hands, which are then cut out and hung up around the school to remind the students of what they have learned.
“To see 600 to 700 traced hands hanging on a school wall is breath-taking and it still brings tears to my eyes,” said Manuel-Dupont.
In addition to the in-class presentations, the students plan follow-up activities for the schools they visit and make promotional posters to hang up in the Lilly White Building at USU. The student group is available to anyone who wants to get involved.
Manuel-Dupont, an associate professor of communicative disorders, English and engineering, said she wants her students to know that education is more than sitting in a class taking notes.
“So many of the students at USU are so used to being students and evaluated that they don’t realize they can be teachers themselves,” she said. “I want them to see that taking the knowledge they gain and giving it back is how we become well-rounded citizens and you don’t need a degree to do that.”
For more information on upcoming events send an e-mail to Sonia Manuel-Dupont at sonia@cc.usu.edu
-stephhafen@cc.usu.edu