By Henry Castaniada, Superintendent of the SUESD
This month Santa Cruz Gardens Elementary School celebrated an outstanding family event called Pages and PJs. A local Santa Cruz author, Ms. Cece Meng, kicked off this year’s event where families throughout the Santa Cruz Gardens community attended small group stories led by various community members. Having students attend a special reading night where families come together to celebrate the joy of reading was fantastic.
The Pages and PJs reading event is still going strong after ten years. Ms. Jen Fields (2nd grade teacher) is one of the originators of this event. I have participated in this event for the past three years and it is without question that the positive energy that takes place between the readers and our students is wonderful to observe. Students and families throughout the evening are able to attend three different group events and each and every one of these small group events are filled with wonderful stories about various characters and challenges.
Creating events like Pages and PJs provide schools with a golden opportunity to embrace the love of reading and to engage in conversations with parents regarding the importance of having students read at home regularly. Ms. Kerry le Roux, the school principal and a wonderful reader, started this special evening by noting specific academic outcomes for children when they are reading regularly throughout the week. There is a major relationship between student success and the frequency that children read. Ms. le Roux’s message for her parents is to continue to model the joy of reading and to be proactive in engaging reading opportunities for their children at home.
This year the Pages and PJs event added a special opportunity for students to enjoy the love of reading. They instituted a bookmark contest where students designed their own bookmarks and submitted their designs for a school wide contest. The highlight of the bookmark contest was that each grade level winner would have their bookmark entry copied and laminated for distribution at Pages and PJs. It was terrific seeing the joys on our children’s faces as they shared bookmarks among their friends.
Bringing community members together and providing opportunities for families to gather at a school event creates a powerful sense of community. I was extremely impressed with the outstanding coordination from Santa Cruz Garden’s Home and School club members, Ms. Amanda Jackson Miller and Ms. Tina Bonar. These two hard-working individuals created an atmosphere where a record number of individuals attended this special evening. Orchestrating three different rotations and recruiting enough “celebrity readers” is always a challenge. Observing the positive interactions that occurred from family to family and the special time where children enjoyed milk and cookies upon conclusion of the reading event was a special touch.
I hope that all schools will continue to have an event like Pages and PJs. Sharing the love for reading and providing special opportunities for families to gather together creates special memories for students, parents and staff. I thought it was quite clever as the evening was coming to a close to have a stuffed animal sleepover in the library. Students were allowed to tuck in their soft toys for the night.
I am looking forward to returning to Santa Cruz Gardens next year for this special event.