Fireside School students spent over a million minutes buried in books during the K-8 school’s annual read-a-thon this year.
Fireside School just ended another chapter of their annual month-long Read-a-Thon on Feb. 27, and smashed their previous records of collective hours the students spent reading to help raise money for a new learning space for the school.
This year, the initiative was led by Grade 8 students Bella Tanzola and Jack Mirosh, who took on the illustrious role of “Super Reader Leaders.”
According to the final numbers provided by Tanzola, the cumulative hours read by the students amounted to approximately 1.153 million minutes – nearly three years’ worth of minutes spent reading.
Most importantly, the event raised over $12,500 to help enhance Fireside School’s outdoor learning space.
“This can really help our community as it boosts our reading opportunities and really makes our community inspired to read, as well as having a cool outside [space] to do more stuff outside during recess,” Tanzola said.
As the Super Reader Leaders of this year’s event, Mirosh said he and Tanzola were given the opportunity to bring the school community together to support a common goal, doing an activity they all love and enjoy.
“Within our school community, we volunteered to read to the little kids in our school, the Grade 1s and 2s,” Mirosh said. “It’s really awesome to go to their classrooms, read to them for a little while, and spark interest and joy in a topic that I think is beneficial to everyone.”
Tanzola and Mirosh both agree that reading and the Read-a-Thon are important for everyone, regardless of age or grade.
“I think it is such an important event because I really get to spend more time reading instead of sitting in my dark basement, being like, ‘Oh, I have nothing to do,’” Tanzola said. “And just giving that extra push of a read-a-thon being there, it really makes me see how important it is to read for our mental health.”
In addition to leading the event, the motto for this year’s event, “We’re growing a community of readers,” was inspired by Tanzola.
“We are growing as a community of readers, and without saying, we are really turning into an inspirational school,” Tanzola said.
Although Fireside School may be fairly new, Mirosh said events like the Read-a-Thon are fantastic at fostering a sense of school culture and spirit.
“It makes school more fun to go to, and I think that is the most important,” he said.
There were 100 prizes doled out to readers during this year’s Read-a-Thon, with 90 more given out in celebration after it formally ended in February. Nearly every prize was provided by members of the community.
Community partners for the Read-a-Thon include Shredz Shop Cochrane, Rebel Comics, Found Books & Shop, River Heights Subway, River Heights Domino’s, Reet Beet Designs, the Holliday Collective, Tanya McIntyre, Mr. Petterson, Mrs. Cheverie, The Military Museums of Calgary, and local author J. Neven Pugh.
Additional sponsors of the event are The Friends of Fireside Society, Cochrane Movie House, Found Books & Shop, MacKay’s Ice Cream, Calaway Park, SLS Centre, Cochrane Tim Hortons, Fireside McDonald’s, and the Sly Family.
Assistant principal of Fireside School, Tara Sly, said seeing the event come to life though the student-led efforts of Tanzola and Mirosh, and the support of the community were highlights of this year’s event.
“One of my favorite parts was the reading chain at the end, where over 750 people in our school came together collectively and formed a reading chain throughout the building on both floors,” Sly said.
For Tanzola, she said the event was significantly different compared to last year’s read-a-thon. Having more prizes helped incentivize young readers, and she believes it helped them nearly double their previous record, which was around 800,000 cumulative minutes of reading.
“That’s a big number, but this year, from all the sparks of attention and inspiration from all the little ones, they all read to boost that goal [further],” Tanzola said. “And I’m just proud to see the community really burst with this reading inspiration.”
Although this will be Mirosh’s final year at Fireside School before he moves on to Bow Valley High School in September, he said it was a fun experience.
“Personally, I would be absolutely thrilled to see more students next year run this kind of thing again so we can keep that school spirit and school culture going,” Mirosh said. “And hopefully inspire more people to read and come together in the future.”
Tanzola, who is also moving on to Bow Valley High School next fall, said she hopes future students carry on the Super Reader Leaders legacy.
“We have to find someone with that kind of spark,” Tanzola said. “I am passing on that torch!”
Sly added that engagement and involvement from the community from the event came in various ways. This also included guest readers from the community, who she noted were outstanding this year.
“In addition to Jack and Bella, some of the Grade 7 and 8 leadership students took on those roles,” Sly said. “We also had our former acting principal, Mary Magee, our area director, Sandy McDuffe, and our superintendent, Greg Luterbach, come in to read for a whole morning with many classes in our school.
“Our school resource officer constable, Nathan Moore, came in, as did one of the town municipal officers, Sam Casselton.”
Sly hopes that all her students are proud of what they accomplished for this year’s Read-a-Thon.
“To be able to stand up and say that the kids at our school read over a million minutes – that’s a pretty big deal.”
