Pikesville Middle School to Get New Carson Reading Room

The students at will see something a little different in their building when school reopens in late August.

School officials confirmed that a new Ben Carson Reading Room will be built and ready to go by then.

The project is a room built for reading and designed to be a place where students come to relax and read—and learn. “The whole idea is [that] reading is the key to take you places,” said Laura Getty, who serves as the school’s librarian and sixth-grade English teacher. “We want to use it to encourage reading.”

The school received funding for the room from the Carson Scholars Fund in Baltimore. The fund is named after Dr. Ben Carson, a nationally known pediatric neurosurgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital who has reached out into the community—both locally and nationally—to push the importance of reading and academics.

Sixty Carson Reading Rooms have been set up in seven different states. Wellwood International Elementary School in Pikesville also has a reading room.

"The cozy environment encourages students and their families to come together to recognize the importance of reading," the Carson Scholars Fund website states. " ... The Ben Carson Reading Project nurtures the entire school and allows students to develop the skills necessary to become lifetime readers and learners."

Back in January, Pikesville Middle officials met with those involved with the Carson Reading project, which is an initiative of the Scholars Fund, to pitch their ideas for the project. They were recently approved.

That makes Pikesville the first Baltimore County middle school to get Carson funding.

"It's a big deal!" Principal Mia Talarigo said earlier this year. "We're very excited."

Using both a student-led book committee and a schoolwide survey, Pikesville Middle School students will select all the books in the reading room. The books, which will be separate from the library's and unable to be checked out by students, will not follow any particular genre or theme.

"The goal here is not to push one type of book, but to get books that students like," Talarigo said. "If they don't like the books, then they won't read them."

Guest speakers will visit the reading room through the school's authors-in-residence program, and will feature writing workshops and programs that promote higher education. 

Getty said the room's theme will be higher learning and getting kids to start thinking about college and what they can do there. The school is contacting local colleges, asking for pennants and various items to place in the new room.

Pikesville Middle will get some help in making the room come to life. The Home Depot store in Owings Mills will do the actual construction of the room, which will be in the middle of the school, on the other side of the library. And Value City in White Marsh will donate a big, leather chair for comfortable reading.

“It’s going to be the stepping-stone to bigger things in education and higher learning,” Getty said. “We want [the kids] to see this.”

Wellwood School's reading room also encourages students and their families to use reading and learning as tools for achievement. The school website said 100 students were able to reach the highest level of reading the school set this year.

Patch Contributor Stephanie Bing contributed to this report.