The goal of the project was two-fold: establish classroom libraries for all K-8 classrooms at Abramson and involve undergraduate teacher education majors in deciding what books were best suited for individual classrooms at Abramson. That goal represented a target amount of 7,600 books. Due to everyone's support and generosity, we ended up with 8,665 books, and the project enjoyed wide-spread support.
Donations began to pour in last fall as Margaret Denny, ETPP Instructor and Chapter Advisor of KDE encouraged the membership to bring donations to meetings. In other instances of support, Dr. Sassy Wheeler, Instructor in ETPP, made donations a part of her coursework generating over 1,300 books alone. Similarly, Dr. Laura Choate, Counseling, ETPP, graciously shared the project with her classes, and it just so happened one of her students was directing a center at Renaissance Village so as they powered down their operations, I was allowed to come and collect a significant amount of books. Dr. Kathy Hill in Kinesiology also asked her students in her fall classes to donate books related to wellness and physical activity, and as a result, the project ended up with some incredible examples of expository (non-fiction) texts. Dr. Li Li partnered with his daughter, Zoë, a fifth grader at the Lab School using the book project as a service project, and the Lab school collected over 1,000 books! Two of my students this spring semester shared the project with family, and again, donations poured in from across the state. And the Dean was also a huge supporter. She shared the project with her mother, a retired school teacher, who traveled to Louisiana in April bringing close to another 1,000 books. A former colleague of the Dean's in Oklahoma also collected, donated, and personally delivered over 2,000 books along with 70 beautifully constructed book bags which are designed to extend reading in the classroom to home.
Throughout the entire project, students enrolled in EDCI 3200 sorted the books according to the range appropriate to specific grade levels as part of class activities. Dr. Renee Casbergue and departmental secretary, Amber Salvadras, were also a tremendous help in sorting donations. Finally, the entire ETPP secretarial staff, especially Joyce Stevens, along with the Dean's administrative assistant, Dora Ann Parrinno, continually scouted for boxes for delivery (over 8,000 books represents a large number of boxes). And as we had to consider moving books from Baton Rouge to New Orleans East, Dr. Cheek made sure I had enough plastic garbage bags to cover all those books.
This project epitomized the essence of academic service-learning and community involvement. The entire College of Education enthusiastically assisted as a community, and both service providers and recipients of the service received reciprocal benefits.
-- Margaret-Mary Sulentic Dowell
Fifth-grader Zoe Li, daughter of Kinesiology professor Li Li, spear-headed the involvement of the Lab School students.
"I am a fifth grader at the LSU Laboratory School. My name is Zoe Li. I think that reading is important because kids and adults can learn a lot from reading. A lot they didn't know. I feel that the kids who do not have books are much less fortunate than we are. They are less fortunate because reading isn't just to learn new things, it is also a very popular pastime. My fellow students and I have worked very hard collecting these books. By my fellow students, I don't just mean fifth graders, first, second, and third grade helped us a lot too. We collected these books because we know that the children who went through Hurricane Katrina deserve these books. Just because they were hit by a natural disaster doesn't mean they don't get the same things we do here. Community service is a very important thing to think about. It is not just fund-raising, or book drives, it is about helping others in need. If you, or anybody else don't think community service matters, then I think you should think about all those less fortunate and about how good you will feel after helping them. That is what I think about the books we're donating to Abramsom Charter School in New Orleans. "
- Zoe Li
To visit the school's Web site go to www.abramsonst.org.
View photos of books being delivered to Abramson
View photos of College of Education students sorting books for donation
View more photos of another book delivery day at Abramson
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