From left, Ingrid Fournier, Patti Skinner, Becky Gerhart, and Katarina Moore
Spartan News is a presentation of Mason County Central School District in partnership with Mason County Press.
By Rob Alway, Editor-in-Chief
SCOTTVILLE — Mason County was represented recently at the Michigan Reading Association’s 69th annual conference held earlier this month at DeVos Place in Grand Rapids. Mason County Central High School teachers Becky Gerhart and Katarina Moore and Mason County District Library Scottville Branch Manager Ingrid Fournier and West Shore Community College Director of Library Services Patti Skinner led two separate break-out sessions.
Gerhart and Moore led a session titled “Silent Sustained Reading in High School: Fostering a love of reading in the classroom and building a culture of literacy within the school” while Fournier and Skinner led a session titled “Unbound: Books Not Boundaries.”
“Katarina and I first created a presentation for the West Shore Literacy Network facilitated by Jaynie Manier and Jennifer Lundberg-Anders, which is a gathering of secondary English teachers, WSCC communications professors, and other local literacy experts,” Gerhart explained. “Together, Katarina and I presented how our English Department does Silent Sustained reading (SSR). The presentation was so well-received that they suggested we put a proposal together for Michigan Reading Association’s Annual Reading Conference.
“We were thrilled that they accepted, so we will be making some tweaks to our presentation over mid-winter break. The theme for the conference this year was ‘Read it in. Write it out,’ so our presentation focused on reading.
“Our presentation walked other professional English teachers through the five critical elements needed to foster a love of reading in the classroom, shared the four steps needed to establish SSR, and provided some case study data we have gathered in the last couple of years to show student growth. I am very proud of how Katarina and Marissa Rodriguez, our other English Department colleague, have embraced SSR. Katarina brought the idea of gathering data and tracking a cohort, which I think is a great way to show reading accomplishments and attitudes over time. Together, we are a department unified in our mission to create life-long readers who love to read while we work to create a culture of literacy at MCC.”
Gerhart said teaching children to embrace reading is critical, especially with the challenges of electronics and the post-COVID pandemic era.
“In this age of high-speed internet, video games, and mass media entertainment, it’s even more important to foster a love of reading not only for its own sake, but for the well-being of students,” she said. “We know that students have been struggling academically and socially in this post-pandemic era. Reading can help. I saw some information recently about recreational reading reducing stress, and I also saw that the recent (Community Foundation for Mason County) Youth Advisory Council survey came back with stress as an important issue for teens in our community. We need to show students that reading is a healthy way to manage stress in their lives. This is just one benefit of being a life-long reader.”
Moore said she can relate to the challenges of getting youth to read.
“As a ‘Gen Z’ teacher, I often find that I understand the distractions and concerns of the modern student very personally, as much of what they experience in a normal school day were experiences that I also had as a student,” Moore said. “I have always been a diligent and interested reader; however, I too find it difficult to become fully engaged in a novel when there are so many other things that are pulling at my attention. Young people will almost always go towards the easier dopamine source, so finding ways to introduce books as tangible, non-digital forms of leisure seems important.
“I cannot tell you what a joy it is to hear students who adamantly refused SSR in the beginning stages discover they do, in fact, enjoy reading and are even taking their SSR books with them outside of school. It is incredibly gratifying as an English teacher to know that every student in the building has a book that they could name that they read in the last year, and that they actually read it for themselves.”
Skinner has been the director of library services at WSCC since 2022. Prior to that, she was the branch manager of the Scottville library. During her time there, she developed the Unbound program, which is a program that allows school students to order books from the district library’s catalog and then delivers the books to the schools.
“I was thrilled to present on Unbound with Ingrid Fournier,” Skinner said. “Unbound is a program that creates library accounts for students in Mason County based on their lunch number, a number they already know by heart. Then allows them to request books from the public library’s collection then delivers the books to them in their classrooms. It is a literacy program with a big heart that goes out of its way to show up form students and assure them that the community cares about them.
“I have always wanted to present on Unbound, because I believe in the power of this collaborative program.”
Fournier echoed the words of Gerhart and Skinner.
“In a society that is constantly discussing the education of our children, we all know that children reading is a top priority,” Fournier said. “I have not met many people in my lifetime who think that children should not be literate. What we are trying to do is get books in the hands of as many children as possible. Better yet, we’re working on getting high interest books that children choose to read.
“As a community, it is our job – all of us – to work as hard as we can to make this community better. How do we do that? Help our children. Get books to families who cannot afford them. Work together with as many organizations as possible to help children learn to read.
“As children’s author, Katherine Rundell, states, ‘There’s no doubt that reading for pleasure as a child can change your life. It is a key predictor of economic success later in life…We need to be infinitely more furious that there are children without books.'”
Fournier said the Unbound program, which is offered to Mason County Central and Mason County Eastern school districts, saved the districts a combined $56,265 in the school year 2023-2024, offsetting the need for those districts to purchase books.
_________________
Please Support Local News
Receive daily MCP and OCP news briefings along with email news alerts for $10 a month. Your contribution will help us to continue to provide you with free local news.
Payment can be made monthly via credit card, bank account, PayPal or Venmo through recurring email invoicing. These payments can be set up for autopay each month.
To sign up, email editor@mediagroup31.com. In the subject line write: Subscription. Please supply your name, email address, mailing address, and phone number (indicate cell phone). We will not share your information with any outside sources. For more than one email address in a household, the cost is $15 per month per email address.
Alternative methods:
- We can send you an invoice for a yearly payment of $120, which you can conveniently pay online or by check. If you are interested in this method, please email editor@mediagroup31.com and we can sign you up. You can also mail a yearly check for $120 to Media Group 31, PO Box 21, Scottville, MI 49454 (please include your email address).
Payment must be made in advance prior to subscription activation.
We appreciate all our readers regardless of whether they choose to continue to access our service for free or with a monthly financial support.
_____
This story and original photography are copyrighted © 2025, all rights reserved by Media Group 31, LLC, PO Box 21, Scottville, MI 49454. No portion of this story or images may be reproduced in any way, including print or broadcast, without expressed written consent.
As the services of Media Group 31, LLC are news services, the information posted within the sites are archivable for public record and historical posterity. For this reason it is the policy and practice of this company to not delete postings. It is the editor’s discretion to update or edit a story when/if new information becomes available. This may be done by editing the posted story or posting a new “follow-up” story. Media Group 31, LLC or any of its agents have the right to make any changes to this policy. Refer to Use Policy for more information.
.jpg)
