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Jennifer Martin: A teacher who built a free library for children.
What if you were a teacher in a lower economic area, and the nearest library was 15-miles away.
Then the pandemic hit, making it even harder for your students to get books. What would you do?
Here is what Jennifer did:
(Story continues from "Read More")
Jennifer, a 3rd grade teacher at Gilbert Elementary School in East Austin, Texas opened Miss Martin's Neighborhood Library in her garage.
This library is beautifully decorated and has attractive, professionally built book shelves.
She stocked this library with over 1,500 books of her own, and donations of more books, games and puzzles are coming from teachers, friends and others who wanted to help.
This library now has 3,000 books!
These books cover a wide variety of subjects, from biographies to fiction, from history to science and the fiction includes such great story tellers as Dr. Seuss and Roald Dahl.
Monday - Friday, from 2:30 pm to 4 pm and Saturdays from 9 am to noon, neighborhood children including her students arrive.
They wear masks and gloves and are socially distanced and can choose whatever captures their imaginations.
And just to make it even more special, there is the Saturday "giveaway" in which the children are given puzzles, games and picture books as gifts. There are even free popsicles.
Why does Jennifer do this? To entice children to love learning.
She told the Gilbert Elementary website, "My ultimate goal is to get books into the hands of children and to create excitement around literacy."
Editor's Note:To learn more, click here, here, here, here and here.
In the next KazanToday: A Texas animal sanctuary that connects special needs kids with special needs animals.
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