It takes a village to raise a child – and Bruce Drysdale Elementary’s village of parents, teachers and administrators recently showed up in the dozens for a parent outreach and literacy night in the Green Meadows neighborhood.
The evening was organized to meet with parents, talk about the reading curriculum at school and encourage them to read with their children at home for at least 20 minutes a day, to further improve students’ literacy skills.
“It’s going to take the community,” said Principal BJ Laughter. “We only have the students for 8 hours. They have them for the other 16.”
In addition to talking about reading at home, about 65 parents and students enjoyed a free meal of chicken sandwiches, hot dogs, chips, drinks and fruit donated by Chick-Fil-A, Hot Dog World and Sav-Mor. Union Grove Missionary Baptist provided the paper goods, tables, chairs and support from Pastor Billy Waters, and Blue Ridge Health was on hand to provide information about health services.
“Two Hendersonville Police officers donated their time and Curtis Philon donated his DJ equipment,” Laughter said.
A school resource officer at Bruce Drysdale, Philon got several students up and dancing with his tunes, while others played basketball nearby.
Before the evening ended, Laughter encouraged all the Bruce Drysdale families to take home the hundreds of books the school collected for the event, so parents and children would have some new reading material to work on at home.
Laughter said the school had been collecting children’s books for the past month, and the donations poured in.
“One of our teacher aides set up a box in her neighborhood and people just dropped in books,” he said.
Jellisha Slydell had an armful of books she was looking forward to reading with her 1st-grader.
“We’re going to enjoy this 20 minutes of reading tonight,” Slydell said.
She and Natalie Zuniga, whose son is a 2nd-grader at Bruce Drysdale, were impressed with the literacy outreach event.
“I’ve never seen a principal do something like this before,” Slydell said. “It’s helps a lot of the kids learn more, and read more,” Zuniga added.
Jasmine, Zuniga’s niece and a 4th-grader at Bruce Drysdale, chimed in.
“I love this place,” Jasmine said. “BDS is the place to be.”
(Prepared and written by Molly McGowan Gorsuch, HCPS Public Information Officer.)