Students donate hundreds of books for eager Waterman Elementary readers

Lauren Jefferson — Wed, 14 Apr 2021 19:20:59 +0000

If you listen hard enough, you might hear the sound of pages turning. Just down the road from 91��Ƶ, Waterman Elementary School is immersed in a reading challenge this month.

And they’re doing so with the support, encouragement and 300-plus new resources donated by 91��Ƶ students: each donated book will be a prize for an eager young reader when the 100,000-page goal is met.

Brandon Higgins, a senior psychology major interning with 91��Ƶ’s Residence Life this year, led the project. He and his internship supervisor, Assistant Director of Housing and Residence Life Lindy Magness used the results of a campus climate survey to guide the project, with the goal of forging a stronger link between the university’s residential students and the Harrisonburg community, Higgins said.

Higgins invited the Nursing Student Association and Black Student Alliance to join.

“Carlyn Gingerich from NSA and Jakiran Richardson and Rebecca Yugga with BSA were really helpful organizers,” Higgins said.

His mother and her co-workers at Pierce Elementary School in Fauquier County also contributed.

Many of the books donated by the students were specially selected for cultural and linguistic representation, Magness said. She remembered seeing books on environmental stewardship, famous black women in history, and Spanish-language texts, along with lots of classics, such as “If You Give A Mouse A Cookie.”

Some of the books inscribed with notes from 91��Ƶ students and ready for delivery in the Student Life suite.

Before Higgins delivered the books, students living on the second floor of Elmwood spent some time inscribing notes to the students.

Waterman reading specialist Laura Thomas and librarian Diane Driver helped the project develop, giving support and ideas, Higgins said.

“I really appreciated Brandon’s initiative in bringing this to us,” said Thomas, who chairs Waterman’s literacy committee and connected the project to the April reading challenge. “I welcome anything that encourages reading by our students and also welcome any community support of our school!”

Driver noted that getting kids to fall in love with reading has many benefits, including language skill and vocabulary development, exploration of different perspectives, and engaging critical thinking skills.

“The more books we can put into their hands, the greater the chance that they will become life-long readers and learners, she said. “Many of our students rely on the school library and the public library for books to read beyond their classroom, so any opportunity that allows us to get more books in children’s hands is appreciated.”

Books, Driver added, “expand minds and offer experiences our students may not have imagined.”

Higgins can relate to this: he remembers that he and his brother listened to their mom read aloud every night. “I was always interested in the shenanigans that Harry and Co. got up to.”

Harry Potter, of course!

Campus activities (Screaming Bingo, COVIDeos!) still thriving: here’s how (more like who)

Randi B. Hagi — Thu, 16 Apr 2020 15:32:44 +0000

“SCREAMING BINGO! COVIDeos! NEW WEEKLY PUZZLE! PEN PALS! & MORE!”

Undergraduate students at 91��Ƶ (91��Ƶ) are well-familiar with these raucous, all-caps subject lines hitting their inboxes like glitter-filled paintballs. The joyful missives are weekly activity updates from Tyler Goss, the assistant director of student programs and Hillside residence director.

When he’s crafting and coordinating campus-wide events, Goss knows, “if I laugh when a new idea hits me, then that’s a sign of a worthwhile event.”

Even during a pandemic, Goss is still finding ways to get students laughing, sharing, and supporting one another through virtual means. The aforementioned “Screaming Bingo” has been his favorite so far – with the few students left on campus spread far apart on Thomas Plaza, other students joining from home via video chat, and Goss shouting out bingo numbers through a megaphone from the Campus Center balcony.

Tyler Goss, upper right, uses a megaphone to scream bingo numbers across Thomas Plaza and the front lawn to not exactly a teeming horde of players. But there’s a laptop nearby hosting the virtual crowd, who are also competing for prizes.

Screaming Bingo players (roomies, thus the closeness) on Thomas Plaza represent a small slice of the 91��Ƶ student body, with others participating through Zoom.

Tyler Goss confers with Maplewood Residence Director Lindy Magness, official Screaming Bingo assistant with the job of passing along bingo calls from a random generator and managing the virtual players.

“It felt like the perfect event to keep things light and lively during these strange times,” he says. Other recent hits include virtual trivia, live streamed yoga with Professor Justin Poole, and a blanket fort challenge.

“People went ALL OUT!” for that one, says Goss. Which is no surprise, given the which you can watch below. “Entire basements were converted into blanket mansions with the fort being subdivided into multiple rooms.”

How does he come up with these shenanigans?

“It’s sort of like the ‘Yes, and’ rule of improv,” says Goss, referencing the rule of thumb in theater improvisation where you build a skit by accepting what another actor just said – and then taking it further. “A student suggests an ambitious idea to me, or a ridiculous thought hits my head, and I just go with it: ‘Yes! That’s it… and what else can we do with that!?’”

He also brainstorms with his student programs colleagues Rachel Roth Sawatzky and Shelby Alto, and student workers in the Campus Activities Council. And when he needs a bit of inspiration, social media platforms like TikTok are chock full of ideas for how to make people laugh.

Goss first came to 91��Ƶ as a grad student – he holds a master of divinity from the Eastern Mennonite Seminary and a master’s degree in conflict transformation from the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding.

“I came to 91��Ƶ because I wanted to go to a quality Anabaptist seminary, but I also wanted to pursue a dual master’s degree in peacebuilding. You can’t get any better than 91��Ƶ for that combo,” Goss said. He’s now been a residence director here for four years, and the assistant director of student programs for two years.

“Tyler has a great attitude and his positive spirit is infectious,” said Roth Sawatzky. “He continues his important work of building community and connecting students with each other and the broader 91��Ƶ experience despite our current dispersed reality. When we initially discussed what this time would look like from a program perspective, his eyes were literally sparkling with excitement over the creative opportunities ahead.”

The activities Goss organizes offer different comforts for students struggling with social distancing – ways to see familiar faces, voice concerns and questions, or just lighten up a day inundated with Zoom-based classwork. Ultimately, though, “being so distant from one another is hard, so we are trying to sustain the connectedness 91��Ƶ is known for,” says Goss.

That connectedness is more important now than ever, although it takes a bit more creativity and technology to curate. To quote one of Goss’s tongue-in-cheek emails, “As Eleanor Roosevelt once said, ‘the internet can’t stop me!’”

LIndy Magness Archives - 91����Ƶ News

Students donate hundreds of books for eager Waterman Elementary readers

Campus activities (Screaming Bingo, COVIDeos!) still thriving: here’s how (more like who)

LIndy Magness Archives - 91��Ƶ News