Montgomery County school board President Julie Yang didn’t have picture books when she was a child. But when she turned 8 or 9 years old, her father began bringing home discarded newspapers for her to read, Yang told a small crowd of students Monday at Strathmore Elementary School in Silver Spring.
“I didn’t know it then, but I realized now that [the] love and hope that he had for me were all wrapped in those newspapers, and that shaped my attitude to learning for life,” Yang said. “Reading is important. … It helped me learn another language. … It helped me see the world is bigger than where I was living.”
Strathmore Elementary students will have more opportunities to see how big the world is through reading now that the school is set to receive about 20 new books from the Maryland State Education Association. Strathmore was one of 23 schools in the state selected to receive the new books, Colleen Morris, treasurer of the state teachers union, announced at a Read Across America event held at the school Monday morning.
“We brought books from all across the country that represent all different types of people and all different places,” Morris told the group of students gathered in the school’s library.
Read Across America was launched in 1998 by the National Education Association and is the “nation’s largest celebration of reading,” according to the association. While Read Across America supports literacy throughout the year, March 2 and is Read Across America Day, and March is National Reading Month.
According to Morris, the state education association asked public school teachers on Read Across America Day which school in each county were most deserving of new books. One school from each county was selected and Strathmore was selected for Montgomery County, she told Bethesda Today.
To celebrate Read Across America and the new books, Montgomery County Public Schools Superintendent Thomas Taylor and Montgomery County Education Association President David Stein joined Yang and Morris in reading to classes at Strathmore and discussing the importance of reading with students.
“This is the superpower that you are developing to become great adults, and it all begins with reading,” Taylor told the Strathmore students.
Stein, a former Montgomery Blair High School math teacher who taught for 30 years, told students that developing reading and literacy skills is critical to their academic success.
“One of the most important things you have to do to be really successful at higher math is learn how to read and be able to comprehend what you’re reading and be able to understand what you’re reading,” Stein said. “Reading is important in all the things that we learn in math and science and social studies.”
