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Northport Elementary School, a Title I School in Minnesota, has been a First Book Recipient Group for over 3 years. This October they hosted an event with the support of KPMG, providing brand new books for each child to take home.
Check out the below interview with Lori Wolfe, Basic Skills Coordinator and Instructional Coach on Northport Elementary, to learn more about the school and the impact of their recent event with KPMG.
How many children do you serve and what are their age ranges? We have approximately 600 students from the ages of 5 to 12 years old.
How many books have you received from First Book since you registered? Around 5,800 books
How did you learn about First Book? From a referral from another principal
How do you use First Book books? We use the books we receive through First Book for independent choice reading both at home and at school. This year we are going to have a fourth grade book club centering around the books the children are given.
Tell us about the major event KPMG held at your school in October. We had the most awesome event in October! For this kick off of the 2010/2011 school year, we were fortunate enough to have Susan Flynn as a special guest for this reading. Susan is co-founder of KPMG’s Family for Literacy program that engages the entire KPMG community of employees, interns, alumni and families. The program is run in collaboration with First Book. Susan is also a member of the First Book Board of Directors.
Additionally, Erica S. Perl, an award-winning children’s book author, joined us for breakfast as well as an assembly that she led with 100 students from the 2nd grade. Erica’s new picture book, Dotty, was published in August 2010. A special thanks to Erica for traveling from Washington, D.C. to share this day with us.
How has KPMG made a difference on the children you serve? KPMG has made a HUGE difference in the lives of the children in our school. Many of our students do not have any books of their own at home so six books a year “to keep” is so special to them. Many of them do not get to hear anyone other than their teacher read to them so they enjoy listening to the readers from KPMG. It means a great deal to the students to have positive role models come in and take a part of their busy day to spend time with them and read. What a great life lesson for our students!
