RSS Feed
 |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
Provisional Rotary Club of Wyandanch delivers new dictionaries to Wyandanch HS
This chapter of the well-known 101-year-old international service organization was established in March 2005 and is working toward full membership status. According to Treasurer Mike Scipio, “Our President (Renee Porter) sets the direction and we are interested in education and health care. She suggested this and we all liked the idea.” When WMHS Principal Kester Hodge announced the upcoming gift at the first open school night of the 2006- 2007 school year, he was met with cheers and applause from the auditorium full of faculty, staff and parents. Teachers of ninth grade English language arts will distribute the books. “We are very excited about being able to ensure that each and every one of our 179 new ninth graders will have their own dictionary to take home as an aid to their study of English,” said English language arts department coordinator and 23-year Wyandanch memorial High School ELAteacher Susan Auer. Principal Hodge said of the gift, “All too often, many of our students lack the appropriate words to express how they feel and/or to communicate effectively. This generous donation of dictionaries by the Rotary club represents an understanding of the importance of literacy and an investment in this essential aspect of the lives of our students.” The next day, many students wrote to the Wyandanch Rotary Club to express their thanks. “I am deeply moved that your Rotary Club had enough kindness to come to my school and hand out dictionaries in order to improve the speech of Wyandanch Memorial High School students", wrote Lakasha Halstead. She continued, “it is a pleasure to have a club that believes that we can achieve our goals and believes that nobody can make us seem uneducated unless we let them.” Many students remarked that either they or their classmates didn’t have a dictionary at home, which made this a particularly useful tool. Lataysia Wallace was particularly thankful on behalf of those students. You really helped some students because some students are not as privileged as others which is why we are thankful for the dictionaries.” Some put their gift to work immediately, using it to look up words to include in their thank you notes. “Thank you for enhancing my vocabulary, said Faj’r Simmons, while Lucille Samuels’ letter read, in part, “I will be sure to treat it with care and I will surely use it to enhance my vocabulary.” Felicia Rorie noted that the gift was, “exactly what I needed and at the right time...because when I am home doing my homework or a report, there sometimes will be words that I do not know the meaning of or that I am not sure of the spelling. So now that you have given me this great dictionary I will no longer have these problems.”
Marquese King thanked the club “for providing us with the tool we would need for the rest of our life.”
|
for larger version       |
|||||||||||||||||||||
)
