February was Jefferson Elementary School’s  “I love to read month.” Jefferson has done “I love to read” for twenty-four years. This year Jefferson chose the theme of the Olympics, due to the winter Olympics happening at the same time. The school chose to do this because Ali Bernard, New Ulm native, has represented New Ulm at the Olympics before. During the month of February they created fun ways to get the kids involved in reading and even some of the Olympic sports.

I interviewed Heidi Wilker, one of the teachers who presented the Olympics to the students. I asked her a few questions on why they chose to do the Olympics. She said, “Because the Olympics are going on it is an easy theme, kids love it, and it incorporates real-world learning with something they can relate to. Ail Bernard’s mom had brought in some pictures so that the kids were able to identify that; this can be a dream that can happen because we had a student who sat in class here as a student.”

I went on to ask if they were doing just reading in school and she said, “The committee of student events planners put together a packet which includes activities such as a kickoff ceremony. Each classroom signed up for a country and then they picked a flag or some kind of representation of their country.” Many of the classes chose their country due to their backgrounds or where they have traveled. I asked why they have them pick a country and she said, “That puts some classroom connection to the country. The teacher could then take it and research where they are on the map, what do they speak, and what are they good at. One of the teachers wanted to pick Norway; she’s super competitive and, of course, Norway racked up the gold medals in total.”

Heidi Wilker added: “We put together a reading ring so they have to read twenty minutes each to complete the four rings and for a total to fill out the whole sheet is two hundred minutes the whole month. Then they get a prize to go with that, though they don’t know what it is yet.” I asked her a little more about how the sheets work. “Each student fills out a sheet and then they compete against the whole grade levels,” she said. The teachers put up single medals in the hallway showing which grade is in the lead.

I then asked how long they will be doing the Olympics. “Because it is ‘I love to read month,’ there are things that are printed off for the teachers if they want to extend it. We do mystery readers each Wednesday, so a staff member picks out a book and goes to the intercom and says ‘I am the mystery reader here is the book.’ They usually read a page or two. Each week we do what’s called ‘sport time,’ which stands for super prime Olympic reader time, so we take fifteen minutes out of a classroom day to just read.”

I asked her if she could elaborate a little more on the assemblies that they do in the gym. She said, “At the beginning and the end they do an opening and closing ceremony; on March second will be their closing ceremony. They had to represent their country when they came in.”  As Heidi Wilker read their classroom country, the kids would stand up and wave their flags they had made. “They had a torch ceremony in which the teachers had a member from each class line up in the middle of the gym and literally pass the torch to make it so that the kids understood that it came from all the countries.”

One of the big messages the teachers have talked about with the kids was that anyone could become something – they just need to put your mind to it. The teachers were talking at the assembly how just because an Olympian doesn’t medal doesn’t mean they are not good enough, because they did make it to the Olympics after all.