Mahwah Students Read For 267,000 Minutes, And Counting

The Betsy Ross School HSO, teachers and principal have overhauled this year’s Read-a-Thon, thanks to help from the Mahwah Police Department’s DARE officers.

Six weeks ago, kids at the school were recruited as cadets, and enrolled in a “reading boot camp” like program that was designed to get the students excited about reading. Classes of cadets have been divided into teams who log the number of minutes each students reads in a week. The reading cadets meet every Friday as a school to update each other on the progress each team has made, and the teams are ranked in order of the total numbers of minutes read.

Each week, Mahwah Officer Joe Horn checks in with his ‘Reading Academy’ cadets to make sure they are making progress and continuing to read as much as possible. At the end of eight weeks, the team that has read the most will win an ice cream social.

“The numbers of minutes the kids have been reading this year are on average even higher than they’ve been in the past,” HSO member Anna Kourkoulakos, who is part of this year’s Read-a-Thon Committee, said. “The kids got really excited about this theme. We are seeing the amount of time they’re reading stay consistent as the weeks go on, and they aren’t losing interest.”

In the past, Kourkoulakos said Betsy Ross students have been “all over the place” thanks to Read-a-Thon themes: “in space, all across the country.” But this theme has been appealing to boys and girls in Kindergarten through third grade, she said.

Kids are also given incentives to keep reading. At each week’s update assembly, raffles are given out to readers. Anyone who hasn’t read at least 100 minutes that week isn’t eligible. All of the kids have received reading academy dog tags to keep with the boot camp theme, and watches to keep reading time. At the end of the program, cadets will receive diplomas during a graduation ceremony.

The motivation seems to be working. At the fifth week update assembly last Friday, cadets on the “Blue Team,” currently ranked in first place, collectively read for 50,111 minutes. Overall, the entire school has read and logged over 267,000 minutes so far.

Kourkoulakos said the HSO is “extremely happy” with the way the program is running this year. “Everyone is working together – the HSO, the teachers, the principal, and the police department. It’s going really well, and the kids are loving it.”