On Tuesday, April 14, first-graders at Los Padres Elementary School in Salinas are eagerly waiting for Clifford Gilkey to start reading aloud a bilingual book, El león y el ratón, The Lion and the Mouse. After the former teacher and volunteer wraps up, each student will get their own copy of the book – a gift from the Kiwanis Literacy Club of Salinas – to keep.
“When kids have their own library at home, they are going to be better readers,” says Gilkey, who is also in charge of purchasing the books for the Kiwanis Club, which delivers books here on the second Tuesday of each month.
For the past four years, the club has distributed books, in English and Spanish, to first-graders at four elementary schools: Los Padres, Natividad and Loma Vista in Salinas City Elementary School District, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Academy in Alisal Union School District.
On April 14, the club reached a milestone: delivering its 10,000th book at Los Padres.
The club spends about $12,000 on books a year, thanks to various fundraising sources; Gilkey says they hope to add a new school every two years.
Julietta Morga, a first-grade dual immersion teacher at Los Padres, says the book distribution has increased students’ curiosity and interest in reading. “They really enjoy having Kiwanis here reading to them,” she says.
Many of the volunteers are retired teachers and they know how important it is for kids to learn how to read by third grade. “We want them to become life-long readers and learners,” Mitchell Huerta, the club’s fundraising director, said in a statement. (Huerta also serves as a board member of Salinas Union High School District.) Getting books to keep enables kids to build home libraries and to share books with their parents and siblings.
Los Padres Principal Linda Barrera says it takes a village to help students succeed. “It’s nice to have community partners come into the classrooms and into the schools and just work together,” Barrera says.