MHS Students, Faculty Enjoy Another Successful Cafe Read-a-Latte

Over the past eight years, the Medfield High School Library has been transformed into a bookstore cafe environment called Cafe Read-a-Latte for one week each March.

This year, the makeover included reading posters of teachers and faculty along the library walls as they posed with books they recommended to students or books they were currently reading. There was a daily trivia question setup at the entrance of the library, offering a question for students to answer and win prizes, usually coupons to every student's favorite part of the event – the food. A table of donated refreshments was setup at the rear of the room where teachers and parents helped serve the students coffee, tea, hot chocolate, bagels and muffins.

As many would imagine, the refreshment table was the main attraction to Cafe Read-a-Latte as students were able to enjoy various goodies outside the lunchroom. There were also books displayed by genre throughout the room, giving the library that "bookstore" feel. 

“Best week of the year,” said Medfield High School student Haley Yoke as she sat at a table with classmate Laura Petrucci, each enjoying a doughnut from Dunkin' Donuts. “It’s a break from all the stress. It’s just awesome."

Petrucci added: "We would be in [chemistry] right now, but we are here." 

That "break" from the daily grind of class scheduling, research and course work has been the goal of Joanne Schmidt’s Cafe Read-a-Latte and the purpose behind the idea that originated nine years ago.

"It’s a chance to relax with a book," said Schmidt, MHS library teacher and LMS specialist. "They have so much to do for school that they don’t really have a chance to pleasure read, we hear it all the time: ‘I’ve never checked a book out of the library for pleasure. I’m doing so much research.’ So really, just to sit and talk about books, it surprises me how many of them really do read a lot for pleasure but we just really don’t see it during the school day."

In addition to giving students a chance to relax, the week-long event serves as a fundraiser to improve the library’s collection for students.

"We usually raise $1,500 to $1,800 a year," said Schmidt. "The food is mostly donated by Blue Moon, Dunkin Donuts, Coffee Sensations and parents."

Schmidt said the event has become a "community event" over the years with donations from local businesses, parents and MHS faculty and has become very popular among students as the library's foot traffic roughly doubles to 1,000 people per day during the Cafe Read-a-Latte week. 

"It's a busy place," Schmidt said. "We have about 200 kids every morning [before school] and that has turned into a busy time for sales."

The idea behind the annual event was originally presented to Schmidt nine years ago by an English teacher who no longer works at Medfield High. Schmidt began the event the following year and eight years later, has turned Café Read-a-Latte into something students look forward to each year.

"It's sort of my baby," Schmidt said. "It’s getting to work with the parents and the teachers that donate their time. My colleagues have been so wonderful for eight years, supporting this, it has been great."

Cafe Read-a-Latte has been so popular that Schmidt has tried to start a weekly event in the library that gives students a chance to perform, similar to a talent show.

"We’re trying to start a that we are trying to turn into a weekly event," Schmidt said. "Not a moneymaker, but just a place for kids to perform. I have a lot of [ideas] they just require a lot of work."

The work it takes to put together Cafe Read-a-Latte begins six weeks prior to the start of the event and requires a lot of volunteerism from the community and a lot of organization from members of the MHS faculty.

"We start with letters to donors," said Schmidt. "We have EDLINE, the communication system to e-mail parents, students and staff for volunteer help, so that’s the scheduling of it all. The week before, we are running around to all the donors and making sure they’re onboard. Every year we try something new to add so the seniors aren’t seeing the same thing for three years.

"I plan it with the English teachers, making sure every student gets to come down here at least once throughout the week. Most of them we see often but they each have one whole class period where they stay in here."

Schmidt said one of the biggest "physical efforts" is taking all the fiction books off the shelves and reorganizing them into different genres and categories, to make them easy to find and more appealing for the students. 

"The new category we added this year is if you like the TV show 'Glee' try these books," Schmidt said with a laugh. Other categories were friendship, science-fiction, romance, horror and mystery. 

Schmidt's recommendation?

"My favorite book right now is the 'Book Thief' [by] Marcus Zusak," she said. "It’s a Holocaust story that has a lot of humor in it too. Sounds impossible but it’s a very cool book and has illustrations, it’s great. Everybody likes it, no matter how old you are, it’s a great read."

So, as part of National Education Association's Read Across America celebration, Medfield High School students enjoyed a week dedicated to relaxing for a class period with a book of choice in one hand and a doughnut or bagel in the other, while helping the library raise money for its collection. 

"It's been a great event for the last eight years and is truly a community-wide effort," said Schmidt.