LYNN — Deputy Superintendent Kimberlee Powers wanted to offer a second lesson along with the lesson she came to Lynn Woods and Shoemaker elementary schools to impart.
She wanted to teach the students how to use a dictionary, but she also wanted to remind them that inclusivity is essential.
Wednesday was Dictionary Day at the city’s elementary schools — when Lynn Public Schools, the Lynn Rotary Club, and Reading Cooperative Bank teamed up to distribute almost 1,200 dictionaries to third-grade students, project coordinator Stephen Archer said.
Representatives from all three institutions — including Superintendent of Schools Dr. Evonne Alvarez — spread out among the 18 schools, passing out dictionaries and telling the third-graders that the reference books were theirs to keep.
Powers had the job of teaching the children at Lynn Woods and Shoemaker how to use the book. Other administrators spoke elsewhere, accompanied by Rotary members and officers from the bank.
“I’m going to teach you how to be word detectives,” Powers told the students.
She proceeded to show the children how to find words in the dictionary, and what to look for — things such as parts of speech, pronunciation, and definition.
She then gave each class a word to find. In this case, the word was “inclusive.”
“Why not?” she asked. “It’s such an important thing, inclusivity.”
“Lynn’s greatest resource is the diversity of its people,” said Lynn Rotary President Jean-Marie Minton of Minton Regan Homes of Beverly, an offshoot of Keller Williams Realty. “It’s exciting that we have children who represent all corners of the globe. That’s exciting, that we get to give a book to all those children. I think that’s just who we are at Rotary. We do so many things for people.”
The children found the word easily. Rotary members and LPS officials also explained to the children that there are many glossaries in the back of the dictionary, which is tailored to children. The students immediately found the page for sign language.
“These are yours to keep,” Powers, who was a longtime principal at Ingalls Elementary School, said.
In the 16 years Lynn Rotary has been involved in the Dictionary Project, a national program that provides dictionaries to third-graders, this is Archer’s first time as coordinator. He took over for Jim Harris, who moved out of the district.
“I love the program,” said Archer, a retired Lynn Fire chief who has been involved with the program for the three years he’s been a part of Rotary. “It can be a lot of work pulling it all together, but it’s worth the effort. It’s my favorite activity.”
“Any time I get to interact with kids, watching them, looking at a kid’s face when we tell them it’s their dictionary, and that they can take it home, and to teach them how to use it, that’s something encouraging,” he added.
Both Minton and Archer spoke highly of the staff members at Reading Cooperative, which helped defray the cost of the dictionaries.
“We couldn’t do this without Reading Cooperative,” Minton said.
“Yes,” Archer echoed. “Reading Cooperative has been very cooperative.”
The schools participating were Aborn, Brickett, Callahan, Cobbet, Connery, Drewicz, Fallon, Ford, Harrington, Hood, Ingalls, Lincoln-Thomson, Lynn Woods, Sewell-Anderson, Shoemaker, Sisson, Tracy, and Washington.
