MANATEE COUNTY, Fla. — Ballard Elementary School recently announced a new addition that aims to enhance student learning. This marks the second school on Florida’s west coast to receive the “Carson Scholars Fund” to create a Ben Carson Reading Room.
Principal Rudy Keezer says this is a vital addition, especially because the school is in one of Manatee County’s highest poverty areas.
“As I look at my area here, we are very high poverty and high homeless rate. And I don’t know of a bookstore that’s within a 15-20 minute drive even from here, and certainly not walking distance. But if you go out to a more suburban type area of our county, you have Books-A-Million, Barnes & Noble. So it gives them that opportunity and why that’s so important,” he said.
The anticipation had been building since last spring. This was the celebration for the Ben Carson Reading Room at Ballard Elementary School, but once the festivities end, and all is quiet, there’s only one thing student Violetta De Diego wants to do: read.
“Look, I invited Gerald to a party. It is cool,” she said. De Diego didn’t pick just any book… this is her favorite. “It’s Piggy and Gerald,” she said.
She reads not just in school but also with her family at home.
“At my house we have loads of books and we like to read them before we go to bed,” she said. For her, reading goes beyond just the norm. She sees it in her future.
“When I grow up, I want to be a librarian because sometimes I like to help people find books and stuff,” she said. She says each book is an opportunity to visit a new world.
“My imagination, sometimes I like to stop in the middle of the book and, like, close my eyes and think of what’s happening in the book,” she said.
At a time when multiple national studies show declining literacy rates for students, the goal of this reading room full of new books is to provide a range of reading material at different levels.
“Sometimes when I’m reading a hard book, I like to go through the story and find the solution,” she said.
It’s a new room offering 5,000 stories to choose from, so that students like De Diego can write their own path.
The school’s principal said that students will have access to this reading room even outside of school hours. The room will be open to students from 6 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., two and a half hours before the school opens and three and a half hours after the school closes (four and a half hours on Wednesdays). There are fewer than 300 Ben Carson Reading Rooms nationwide.
Julia Hazel
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