Leslie Preddy, Library Media Specialist (aka School Librarian)
Perry Meridian Middle School

You help make memories that stick and develop a sense of community within our schools. Perry Township Education Foundation helps to fund what doesn’t fit into a traditional budget but is what my principal calls the ‘glue.’ A great example of this is when the Foundation funded our inspiration to begin a Reading Madness Month where our school focuses on fun, creative, and social ways to bring the importance of reading to the forefront, and we have so much fun with this event. Next year will be our 10th annual Reading Madness Month.

You allow us to be creative, innovative, and inspiring. For example, the Foundation funded a Wii system for our special needs classroom when we were working on a way to help them develop physical coordination.

You have helped me fund the learning dreams of so many classrooms, the library, teams, departments, clubs and school-wide programs as well as community projects. Your grants have helped me bring parents, local experts, reenactors, authors, and even horses to our school. In 2008, the Foundation funded a start-up grant, and now each semester, we host a Family Read-In event where a student and significant adult read the same book and then join us at school for an evening of book-themed games, crafts, snacks, and conversation. It’s a great way for families to reconnect to their child.

Through my relationship with the Foundation, I have brought over $87,000 in projects to my school. Often what we need, the kick-start Foundation funds provide to test out an idea we think will matter. The Foundation helped us complete our action research to learn how we could have an impact on students and reading. Through our SSR with Intervention action research, we found our students needed time to read for pleasure and to develop relationships with people around reading and adult role models who also read.

I am excited to have the Foundation’s support to start hosting science and recycling activities in the library, to help our struggling readers learn how to be better readers by becoming picture book authors and reading their self-published picture books to kids in younger grades, and to work on a school-wide community building and service learning project through a variety of educational and fun activities connected to the American Heart Association’s Hoops for the Heart program.

Thank you for supporting the Perry Township Education Foundation and a big thanks to the Foundation for funding the learning dreams and enthusiasm that becomes the glue of our little school communities.

Comments are closed.