SUMTER COUNTY, Fla. — The Lemira Literacy Parade is here, as Sumter students show off their best costumes that come from their favorite books.
“I’m kind of like a little bit of a show off,” fifth-grader Mason Strong smiles.
It’s why the 10-year-old played in the front of the Lemira Elementary School Literacy Parade.
“I just like people just to see me just do it,” Strong explains. “I just like to see their reaction.”
Classmates followed behind Strong, dressed as their favorite book characters to promote reading.
“It’s a good idea to [promote] reading because, like, it's just like there are so many characters in a book, you may want to always want to be a character, so the purpose is to dress up as one so you could feel like that character,” Strong details. “You're just dressed up as your favorite character and now people will know that's your favorite book, your favorite character and stuff.”
“Promoting literacy should not be just one way because students love different things and they learn in different ways,” librarian Emilia Jackson shares.
Jackson says finding ways to make reading fun is helpful to instill a love for books in the next generation.
“It's important to promote literacy because reading is the base of everything. Any career, anything you do in life you need to read and it's very important for the kids to be able to read, like I said, different genres and different types of writing. And without the reading, you cannot do anything,” Jackson says. “You cannot study math or science or social sciences. So reading I think is really the most important core subject that students can have in a school.”
This effort isn’t only up to the school, Jackson says.
“We're trying to adjust our teaching and our activities in the school to match everybody's interest and everybody's way of learning and trying to get their attention in all types of ways like today, having community members coming in, that's promoting literacy and, you know, even helping the community to come in and start talking with our kids about reading,” Jackson adds. “We’re trying to reach everybody — parents and students and, like I said, community members — everything to work together and develop our students to become the future leaders.”
Community members like Jerry Underwood, the pastor at Eastside Baptist Church, a community faith-based partner, who acted as grand marshal of Friday's parade.
“It's very fulfilling. You kind of see the fruits of your labor come out in the smile on the kids face that makes it all worth it,” Underwood shares.
The church works with Lemira as part of its Heart for Schools Program, which aims to serve teachers.
“We believe it's important for a church to get involved in the community, to embrace the people in the community, to really to help the people in the community,” Underwood says. “That's very important.”
It’s this community involvement in events like the parade that can spread that love for reading even further, Jackson says.