Reading with Reid
Reid Davis
December 9, 2013
Bullard 4th Block
5th Year IBMYP

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Table of Contents
Title Page…………………………………………………………………...................1
Table of Contents……………………………………………………………………..2
Thesis Statement/ Introduction………………………………………………………..3
Background Information……………………………………………………………....4
Research/ In-Text Citations……………………………………………………………5
Introduction of Project………………………………………………………………...6
Steps of Personal Project………………………………………………………………7
Interviews…………………………………………………………………….…...8 & 9
Product ………………………………….…………………………………………...10
Conclusion/ Reflection…………………………………………………………11 & 12

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Reading With Reid
Thesis Statement
My primary goal for this project is to bring happiness and a better education to the students at Turning Point Academy. I did this by buying and collecting books to donate to the libraries that serve Turning Point Academy students in order to increase their reading opportunities and their learning environment. This project has reminded me that reading is a joy that belongs in every one’s life and should be considered a privilege more than as a right.
Reading is amazing. In fact, amazing doesn’t even begin to describe how unbelievably valuable reading is in one’s life. The dictionary definition of reading is “the action or skill of reading written or printed matter silently or aloud,” (Webster’s Dictionary). This definition doesn’t adequately describe reading because it does not fully portray the valuable benefits that you receive from the moment you start reading. What is often overlooked is just how many times a day you read something. You read the time on your alarm clock every morning. You read the cereal box when you’re getting your breakfast. You read the speed limit sign when you are driving to school or work. Every time you open your eyes, you are reading. It’s an inevitability of life, like breathing or blinking. I cannot imagine a world without reading, which is why the Turning Point students’ situation made such an impact on me.
Background Information Davis 4
From my earliest memory, I have loved to read. Heck, it’s my name. Even when I was a tiny girl and could not read to myself, I loved when my parents or my older sister read to me. I was fascinated at how an author told a story in their own personal way and how they could make every aspect of their story interesting down to the smallest detail of a subject. I have always enjoyed reading the Junie B. Jones series, the Angelina Ballerina series, mostly due to the fact that I have been dancing for thirteen years, and the Ramona Quimby series. In kindergarten, I was one of the top readers in my school. Every summer from the end of kindergarten to the end of fourth grade, we had a school- wide reading competition that was measured by the amount of hours we read in those three months during the summer. As a first grader, I read over three hundred fifty hours in one summer, beating close to nine hundred students for the number one spot in our school. Throughout elementary school, we used Accelerated Reading, in which a student is given a goal in AR points to reach before the end of every quarter. After reading every book, each student would take a computer test to get as many points as possible by answering question from each book. By the second week of school every year, I had already reached my goal. In middle and high school, I have enjoyed reading Emily Giffin’s works, William Shakespeare in Old English, and Ann Rule murder mysteries. In every grade, I have always accelerated in English and Language Arts, thanks to my speed-reading and extensive comprehensive skills.

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My entire family loves to read. It’s in my blood to be a reader, and thanks to

reading, I have accomplished and achieved more goals due to the amount of information and reading habits I have absorbed at a young age.
Research/ In-Text Citations
Being a reader should not be seen as “nerdy” or “anti- social.” As a reader, you automatically connect yourself with other avid readers through the shared adoration of reading. Reading is another way of communication that is often overlooked. Through reading, you make new friends and you deepen existing friendships with those who enjoy the same types of series of books as you do. Reading allows me to connect with other people in ways that I wouldn’t have unless I had books to share. Far too often, we fail to understand how important reading is, not only in school, but before you enter school. Between the ages of three and five, a child’s brain is like a sponge. It absorbs information and habits that will continue to develop in each reader for the rest of their lives. The early childhood years serve as an essential foundation for subsequent literacy development. Despite the increased attention given to children's early education, gaps remain in our understanding of what is actually taking place in early childhood education programs across the nation. The degree to which children acquire requisite literacy skills is known to be a strong predictor of future academic success and has long-term social and economic implications for families and societies. In a joint position statement Davis 6 issued by the International Reading Association (IRA) and the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), the authors state, "One of the best predictors of whether a child will function competently in school and go on to contribute actively in our increasingly literate society is the level to which the child progresses in reading and writing," (IRA/NAEYC, 1998, p. 30). All children should have the opportunity to receive a sound, basic education and through comprehensive literacy and reading education, we can achieve that goal.
Introduction/ Idea of Project For my project, I initially struggled to connect my love of reading with a project goal. Because of my love and knowledge of reading, I definitely wanted to explore the impact of reading on learning, especially for CMS students in English and Language Arts. The thought of contributing to Turning Point Academy didn’t occur to me until one of my family members visited the school. Turning Point Academy is a CMS school for students who have been so violent or extremely disruptive that they can no longer attend a regular CMS school. My Dad was actually the one to give me the idea about donating books there. My Dad, who is on the Board of Education, visited Turning Point to make sure everything was running properly. When he got home from visiting the students and school, he told me how the students there felt about their education. The main issues that my Dad saw was the shortage of books to meet the students’ desire to read and that the students wanted to have book
Davis 7 clubs. Books were in even greater demand at Turning Point because students there come from greater challenging environments with fewer sources of books. I decided that with my adoration of reading along with my relatively more extensive sources for books, I should invest in helping the students in this school.
Personal Connotation/ Steps of Personal Project Despite the potentially negative connotations my project has on the thought of helping disruptive or misbehaving students, I’m proud that my project is vastly different from others that I have heard about. A project that helps a smaller CMS school that deals with intemperate kids is a bit unusual compared to projects that most of my classmates are doing. Other projects that I’ve heard about are typically based on a subject that the student is most familiar with. Conversely this project forced me to step out of my comfort zone and to compare my school life with my community in a way that I never thought would be possible. From late September to early December, I raised exactly one hundred and one books. I did this through a series of steps. My Mom owns a booth at Slate, an antique mall on Central Avenue. In her booth, I put up a box that had a sign that said, “Book Donation- All Books Are Welcome!” I collected some of the books that way. I also sold expensive antique books, and with that money, I bought less expensive books that Turning Point students would find interesting. By repeating these steps multiple times, I collected exactly one hundred and one books to give to the school.
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Interviews
This project gave me a great learning experience, even though the thought of spending part of my Friday afternoon in an unusual environment initially made me a bit unnerved. However, I wasn’t worried. I had my Dad with me and the people at Turning Point were incredibly friendly. When I got to Turning Point Academy, the first thing I noticed was the setting in which the school was located. Turning Point is in more of an industrial area than a neighborhood. All around the school, there were high fences, cluttered highways, and run down businesses. The few yards that enveloped the school had over grown grass and many of the houses and apartments were abandoned. All of this left me with a feeling of discomfort that was difficult to describe. When my Dad and I walked into the office, we met Julie Schroeder, the Dean of Students at Turning Point. I asked her some questions about the school, and some of her answers were surprising. For example, when I asked her what some of the challenges, besides the obvious, that students at Turning Point face, her answer was their “home environment. One time we had a student from these abandoned, boarded up apartments over here that lived there and they didn’t have beds. You know? They didn’t have clothes. Those basic needs are not able to be met like things we totally take for granted. And when those basic needs are not met, it makes life very difficult for them to even begin to concentrate or participate in class because they’re hungry. They’re cold. They’re itchy scratchy because they haven’t been able to take a shower in a few days or they don’t have hot water. In these apartments over
Davis 9 here, these families would steal electricity from the church so you would see extension cord after extension cord running from the church to these now abandoned apartments because these families had to decide between eating a meal or having power for their heater that day,” she said almost in tears. When she said this, it occurred to me that on the way to Turning Point Academy, I was complaining to my Dad about how cold I was even though I had on a long sleeved shirt and a jacket. I automatically felt guilty and ungracious toward everything my parents have done for me. It also made me think about how it feels to hear other people complaining about their lives when in comparison to your own, their lives seem like royalty. Children who are at risk cannot even begin to “meet the expectations society has put up for them,” as expressed by Ms. Schroeder. It can make a person feel incompetent and worthless. I also asked Ms. Schroeder what she thought would make the biggest difference in the education of any students, not just Turning Point students. After having to think for about twenty seconds, she responded with, “Assisting them in setting an attainable goal or goals and a feasible plan for achieving them. Allowing them to seize successes even if they’re small. So, if you want to be a teacher or a doctor or a veterinarian, we need to assist them in setting up the picture. First, you need to pass this specific class and be present in school tomorrow. Great! Lets break it all the way down in order for them to experience some success and build our confidence and build our self- esteem and know that we can achieve goals. If we just say ‘Ok I’m going to graduate from high school and do well in college and then I’ll
Davis 10 go to grad school so then I’ll come out with this degree,’ well that is completely disconnected. You must go by baby steps in order to achieve that goal. And celebrating successes, redirecting opportunities for growth, and even working in processing with it or reflecting on it and having things in place. For instance, if you come to school five days in a row and that’s apart of our little plan that will get you from point A to point B, if our first goal is to get five full consecutive days of school we’re going to celebrate that success; we’re going to talk about that success and what that will do for that student in the long run.” Having one person there to encourage students in ways that other people cannot is invaluable in the long run. That one person could change that young person’s outlook by helping them through their struggles not only in school, but also in life. One last comment that Ms. Schroeder shared summarized why I wanted to do this project. She said that “books give students, especially Turning Point students, hope for a better future. Books allow students, especially at risk students, a path of opportunities to overcome their current circumstances and achieve a better future.” The final step in completing my personal project was to present the books to Ms. Schroeder at Turning Point.
Personal Project Product
For my Personal Project Product, took pictures of the books I donated and create a DVD slideshow. This DVD shows the result of my personal project with the books that will help the Turning Point students. I took pictures of all one
Davis 11 hundred and one books I gave to Turning Point in groups of three or six, so there are eighteen pictures of books that I have donated. I look forward to hearing Ms. Schroeder describe how the books helped Turning Point.
Conclusion Paragraph The main thing that I want to come out of this project is that no matter what is going on in your life, whether it is a bad grade or family issues that can never seem to be resolved, there’s always an outlet through reading. Hopefully, I can make the Turning Point Academy students’ days a little bit better by providing them a book that could change their outlook on life. You can invest yourself into seven hundred pages of wizards or vampires or whatever you want to read, and you can make yourself forget about everything that is going on in your life. I know that whenever I read, I lose myself into the story my character is in, and I imagine myself in that person’s shoes. Reading is a lucid experience that is hard to compare to anything else in your life.
Reflection
As I look back on my Personal Project, I am proud of the decisions I have made throughout this assignment. I feel like I have enhanced my knowledge about the affects early childhood reading has throughout your adult life. My perspective has grown from the belief that anyone and everyone can read to how access to books, even one book can change a person’s life. Before I began my assignment, I didn’t Davis 12 realize how caught up I was in my own little world. I didn’t even realize that Turning Point Academy was less than fifteen minutes from my house yet I have lived in Charlotte for almost sixteen years. I didn’t bother looking outside my own little bubble that was within the ten- mile radius of my comfort zones. This project has opened my eyes and has helped me realize that little things like a book or a special person can truly change a person’s outlook on life. After I finish this assignment, I’m going to continue to do book donations so I can contribute to Turning Point and other at risk schools and hopefully change a person’s life with a book in ways that it has already altered mine.