By Richard Kaufman
New Lebanon School celebrated National Read Across America Day on Tuesday with a special virtual visit from State Rep. Harry Arora (R-151).
Read Across America was launched in 1998 by the National Education Association. It’s a year-round program which focuses on motivating children and teens to read through events, partnerships, and reading resources.
Arora visited the school on Zoom for about 30 minutes, and spoke to the students about his work in Hartford, and his love of reading. He then read aloud portions from “Who Was Alexander Graham Bell?” by Bonnie Bader. Arora hoped the students would learn lessons from Bell’s perseverance and dedication to his work, even after he invented the telephone.
“He kept [trying inventions] over and over because he loved what he did. I think finding your passion is a very important element of what we want to talk about. Finding your ‘thing’ in life is very important, because that leads to great contributions and great happiness,” Arora said after the event. “But at the same time, just the mere idea of focussing on some science and technology and curiosity and invention was so much fun to read about.”
Reading is a critical activity for people of all ages, especially young students, Arora said.
Growing up, Arora was a fan of fiction, but later gravitated towards nonfiction. He recalled reading Harry Potter books to his children, as well as “Around The World in 80 Days” by Jules Verne. That book holds special meaning to Arora, because his father had read it to him when he was a child.
“Read Across America is just a fantastic way to celebrate reading. Reading is an activity which was personally my favorite activity growing up. It leads to learning, it introduces you to different points of view and points in time, and I think the amount of growth and the possibilities which reading allows is just limitless,” Arora added. “It’s important to encourage reading, especially in a time when attention spans are more towards short-form web search and video games. I think it’s equally important to really encourage our youth and our children to spend time reading a variety of subjects.”
New Lebanon will celebrate reading, as well as Dr. Suess’ birthday, all week with a variety of fun themed activities and books. Teachers will read aloud each day.
The week’s activities can be found below:
“The engaging activities that we plan each year for Read Across America week, like our virtual visit with Representative Arora reading aloud to our students at New Leb and our author visit with Victoria Jamieson at Julian Curtiss who taught our students how to draw graphic characters, excites and motivates our students to want to read,” said Kathy Schnefke, Literacy Coach for New Lebanon and Julian Curtiss Schools.
