Thank You for the Wonderful Computers

Thank you for our wonderful computers in our film class and computer lab.

--Navajo Pine High School
Navajo, NM

Dictionaries in Action!

Here's an update on our dictionary donations which are made possible thanks to the generosity of the Rotary Club of Amherst, MA.)

Dear Reader To Reader and the Amherst Rotary Club Members,

Last week all our Sophomore students took their high school equivalency test, the New Mexico Standards and Benchmarks Evaluation for high school graduation. This standardized test requires many written questions to be answered successfully in order to receive a passing grade and finish high school with a diploma.

Every student is allowed to use a dictionary while they are working on the composition sections of the test. Last week, the dictionaries sent from the Amherst Rotary Club became a critical component, helping our students compete with other New Mexico schools. Your donation of dictionaries has helped each student take this very difficult test. Without your donation there would have been no dictionaries in our school.

Your groups, Reader To Reader and the Amherst Rotary Club, have supported our school and the donations continue to bear fruit--sometimes in totally unexpected ways.

Thank you all once again,

Carla Clauschee
Navajo Pine High School
TESOL
Testing Representative

Bridgeport Literacy Initiative Soars into 3rd Year

A giant thank you to the Xerox Corporation and the Pitney Bowes Corporation, and it’s Pitney Bowes Employee Involvement Fund, for making the 3rd year of Reader To Reader's Bridgeport Literacy Initiative possible.

The Bridgeport Literacy Initiative brings much-needed books to low-income children attending schools in Bridgeport, Connecticut.

Denise L. Jones, Library Media Specialist at Bridgeport’s Longfellow School marveled at the first delivery of the new year.

“The books on community and careers were snatched up by the third grade teachers who were planning a project and needed books on careers written on the grade level of their students. These books came at the right time and were a perfect addition to the collection that I have in the library. Much thanks again to Reader to Reader for continuing to support Longfellow School and our efforts to improve literacy.”

Reader to Reader gift is appreciated

(Published in the Amherst Bulletin, Jan. 16, 2009)

To the Bulletin: Once again David Mazor and Reader To Reader has found a way to help our school, Navajo Pine High, with a tremendous donation of 30 Dell computers worth at least $45,000. These computers will help our teachers and students master the technology to succeed in this century.

Our school is constantly struggling to supply the basic operational necessities to give students the best educational skills and materials needed to succeed in our complex world. The donation has made it possible to build and equip a computer and film lab. Every student and staff member will benefit from this generous donation.

I would like to thank Reader to Reader for the tens of thousands of dollars worth of books it has sent our school over an eight-year period and congratulate it on the success of its mentoring program.

Reader To Reader offers hope and concrete materials to help teachers make a difference, assuring that "no child is left behind."

Carla Clauschee
Navajo Pine High School
Navajo, N.M.

Books for New Americans

Kathleen Hasbrouck, lead teacher for infant and toddlers at the newly opened Center for New Americans in Northampton, MA, dropped by to pick up boxes of board books for this very worthy program.

The Center for New Americans (CNA) is a community-based education and resource center that provides immigrants and refugees in Hampshire and Franklin Counties with education and resources to learn English, become involved members of their communities and obtain tools necessary for economic independence. CNA has locations in Amherst, Greenfield and Northampton. Services include English classes (ESOL), family literacy activities, computer-skills education, citizenship support, employment training, volunteer tutoring, and information and referral services.

A Great Addition to our Collection

Dear Reader To Reader,

We wanted to thank you for sending books to our library. They will be a great addition to our collection and we will all enjoy reading them. Thank you for choosing our library to receive all of these wonderful books. Thank you!

Sincerely,

The students of Limestone Community School
Limestone, Maine

3 More Computers

Three more Dell computers are headed for the Navajo Reservation. The computers will be part of a new computer lab Reader To Reader is building at Navajo Pine High School.

The refurbished Dell Optiplex GX 270 Pentium 4 computers with flat screen monitors were donated by Amherst College and have been serviced by their IT department to be completely ready to run right out of the box.

The library - a recession sanctuary

The Boston Globe reports in an article titled "The Library—A Recession Sanctuary” that library usage is surging across the country even as budget cuts are forcing closures and staff cuts.

The article notes:

In Kern County, California, where Diane Duquette has been library director for 22 years, library checkouts were up 19 percent in the last quarter. She told the Bakersfield Californian, "We've never had that kind of increase before. Wow. In my time here, we've maybe had a 1 percent or 2 percent increase in good years."

The Boston Public Library is no different. New library cards are up 32.7 percent from July to November of 2008, compared with the same period in 2007. Visits are up 13 percent, from 1.4 million visits to 1.6 million. Checkouts of books, CDs, and DVDs are up 7.2 percent overall over the last fiscal year. More telling is that checkouts have soared between 27 percent and 37 percent at the Egleston Square, Fields Corner, Jamaica Plain, and Orient Heights branches.

The article details the myriad uses that make libraries relevant in this day and age for job seekers, parents with young children, and as a community gathering place.