by Maya McFadden The New Haven independent
Career junior Mohammed said that books are helping him learn his fifth language.
Books on books on books.
Reading has helped Marwa Nakhi make friends during her freshman year at Hill Regional Career High School. Now, she can share her love of books with her classmates — and high schoolers across the school district — thanks to the district’s recent purchase of 10,354 books for brand new high school English classroom libraries.
Nakhi was one of 20 Career students in a first-floor English classroom Tuesday morning who received a delivery of six boxes of books and a new shelf to house them. The students watched as Supt. Madeline Negrón announced the $180,000 investment into 73 classroom libraries in high schools across the district during a press conference — in their very classroom.
That investment, funded through the district’s central office Alliance budget, came out of a partnership between New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) and the Scholastic Corporation.
The delivery of the new book collections, Negrón said, is intended to boost literacy rates and offer a phone-free hobby for high schoolers — especially after high schools went phone-free this school year with the implementation of Yondr pouches. Negrón said that at the city’s largest comprehensive high school, Wilbur Cross, the library began seeing an increase in the number of books being checked out by students.
The goal, Negrón said, is to make books more easily accessible to students.
“Without reading we can’t do much,” Negrón told the group of Career students present at Tuesday’s presser.
Nakhi said during Tuesday’s presser that books have helped her connect with her peers, especially in her first year of high school. “It shows you how to have empathy for people that don’t have the same upbringing as you or who may view things different and how to converse with them without being offensive,” she said.
She added that reading books can be more valuable for youth than scrolling social media. Just last week, Nakhi published her first book on Amazon, titled Obscura.
The district stocked 73 English Language Arts (ELA) classrooms across the district at all high schools and Adult Education. NHPS ELA teachers were tapped to curate the collection of more than 10,000 books that they believe offer diverse and meaningful stories that relate to their students’ interests.
Negron emphasized that daily access to culturally relevant texts are necessary for a students’ academic and social development. “We want to continue to invest in that strategy,” she said.
She and the lineup of speakers described reading as a core skill — not just for school, but for life.
NHPS and Scholastic have been delivering boxes full of books and brand new bookshelves to all 73 classrooms over the last two weeks.
Asst. Supt. Keisha Redd-Hannans worked with Supervisor of Secondary English Language Arts Jennifer Sinal-Swingler to work with Scholastic on the classroom library initiative.
Redd-Hannans said Tuesday that oftentimes, when it comes to reading, schools invest in the early grades only. But she noticed when in high school classrooms around the district that many didn’t have books. This meant students only accessed books if they went to the school library. That sparked the vision, Redd-Hannans, said to bring books directly to classrooms.
“When you read, you are able to navigate different choices through the characters that are put in front of you. You’re able to wonder, had I been in that space, would I have made that same choice?” Sinal-Swingler said Tuesday. “It helps us rehearse for a life ahead of us, where hard choices are inevitable, but we can learn lessons and depend on our empathy, and our sympathy, by connecting to the text and the character.”
When the Scholastic truck delivered Tuesday’s books and shelves to Career educator Rose Murphy’s classroom, she called out to her English and journalism students: “Who wants to do an unboxing?”
The students unboxed and shelved books like Outcasts United: The Story of a Refugee Soccer Team That Changed a Town by Warren St. John and The Getaway by Lamar Giles.
Career junior Mohammed said during Tuesday’s presser that reading is a hobby of his, as he enjoys learning more about history. But reading also helped him learn English in two months after he immigrated from Syria. Now trilingual, Mohammed said he is currently learning two more languages, Spanish and Korean, through reading as well.
Reading introduced Mohammed to his new love for learning languages. He has set a goal to learn a total of seven languages by the time he turn 20 in three years. “Now that we can’t use phones, I don’t want to just stare at walls,” he said. “I can learn history and languages in that time now. It’s supporting me so much to be who I want to be.”
Both Mohammed and Nakhi said they are grateful that their teachers no longer have to purchase books for their classrooms with their own money.
Career teacher Rose Murphy: Our students are in EMT courses, interns at the Peabody, in robotics competitions, and publishing their own books.
Negrón, Redd-Hannans, and surprise guest Clifford the Big Red Dog.