Parent Teacher Magazine Union County Public Schools May 2014 | Page 7

The dream of a library becomes a reality at WBEd Center

Walter Bickett Education Pre-K EC teacher Anita Melton Gross has
finally made a dream come true -- the completion of a library at
her school that will enable students to check out books and take
them home to read.

It started as a dream, but after a year of determination and
hard work, that dream became a reality.
The dream, which belonged to Walter Bickett Education Center
Pre-K EC teacher Anita Melton Gross, was simple – build a library
that would enable students to read, not only at school, but at
home, as well.
“It started very small,” she said. “My vision was to have books
that would go on a shelf that could go classroom to classroom.
Our preschoolers need to be exposed to more books.”
She then turned to the community for support. “The books
started coming in by the hundreds,” she said. “So I said, ‘I need a
room to house all these books’.”
The solution – a large storage room at Walter Bickett Education
Center. But with the help of students from Cuthbertson High
School, the storage room became a colorful, brightly decorated
library – a place where students would feel comfortable visiting
and checking out books to take home.
Donations from the community didn’t just stop with books. Items
such as bookshelves, carpet and computer equipment were also
donated. “Ninety percent of everything in the library is donated,”
Gross said.
The library features 15 bookshelves, built low enough so that
Pre-K and kindergarten students are able to reach.
When all was said and done, more than 5,000 books were
collected for the library. “All the books are age-appropriate for
three- and four-year-olds. Our goal is to get a book in every
home, every week.”
Not all the books were for pre-K and kindergarten. Some of the
books that were donated were for older children -- elementary,
middle and high school students. But Gross had a solution for that
– pay it forward.
Walter Bickett Education Center has also built a partnership
with a school in Africa. Gross said books that the library could not
use were shipped to the school in Africa.
Ken Roess, the Walter Bickett Education Center Site
Administrator, said the success of the library wasn’t possible
without the support of the community. “We’ve had that in spades,”
he said. “We continue to have that support.”
An example of this support was a student-led book drive from
Forest Hills High School that collected 926 books and the promise
to repeat the drive on an annual basis.

“There’s a big push for literacy,” Roess said. “We’re putting
books in the hands of kids, both here at school and then
allowing them to take them home and then exchanging them a
week later. We’re promoting literacy and the partnership with
parents who are reading to the kids. All a way around, it’s a winwin.”
Gross said she could not have made this dre