Hands Across the Sea Week!

On Thursday a student asked me to help him to find a book in the school library about outer space. He wants to be an astronaut when he grows up. We found a book titled “The Moon” and I opened the front cover; the book was written before the Soviet Union first landed on the moon in 1959. It didn’t say the moon is made of green cheese so I let him check it out.

I’m working with an outstanding nonprofit, Hands Across the Sea, to update our library. The end goal being to avoid conversations with grade 3 students about why Danielle Steele novels are not appropriate reading material.

Guess what?! You can help too! Hands Across the Sea is a registered 501c3 (so you can write off your donation) that partners with schools in the Caribbean to build libraries. They purchase gently used/new books at library sales in the US and ship the books down to the schools. The founders have set up a number of partnerships to provide free shipping to Dominica (and the other islands) which means that a $10 donation from you would send 10 books to my library!

I’m working with the teachers in my school to incorporate reading into the classroom. Currently the school has no full class sets of books which makes it impossible to assign reading as homework. We’ve identified class sets of books from Scholastic Book Club (remember how awesome the Scholastic Book Club is?) and with just a $20 donation you could provide an entire class set of books. Imagine Grade 4 students in Salisbury could be reading about the Magic School Bus for years to come because of your generosity!

We’re also asking for art supplies to start art projects about the books kids are reading and to allow us to have visual arts during school. A group of students have volunteered to be peer book recommenders and the grade 5 students will go into younger classrooms to read to the students and recommend books. I’m working with some teachers to keep the library open over the summer so children can come and check out books to read while school is closed.

So please be generous if you are able to. I know many of you love to read and I’m sure many children is Salisbury would love reading if it wasn’t from 1960’s text books about how plants reproduce.

How to help: click on this link and donate! Make sure to specify that you are donating to the Salisbury Primary School. Or check out this page about making in-kind donations. Hands Across the Sea will send you a receipt and I will personally send you as many Catholic prayers as I can during a 2.5 hour mass.