By: Kayla Blietz
Peer advisors from the College of Education’s Office of Student Services hosted a book drive to help five Prince George’s County Public Schools. The drive delivered over 500 books to 26 teachers, according to Alyssa Orlando, an organizer and sophomore special education major.
When starting as a teacher, there can be a lot of challenges, according to Shayna Becker, a sophomore human development major and an organizer of the drive. She said the group wanted to alleviate some of the struggles that come with building a classroom library.
“Often that responsibility does fall on the teacher and we definitely wanted to eliminate or sort of ease that responsibility for teachers,” Becker said. “[We want] to make the difficult task of being a teacher just a little less daunting.”
According to Sudbrink, the third organizer of the drive, the group’s main focus was to place these books in pre K-12 classrooms.
By donating books to schools, the group hopes to help out the schools where UMD students intern, so they can maintain the relationship, Sudbrink said.
Becker said this project is special because it shows that the support coming from being a student doesn’t stop when you graduate, but will continue throughout your career.
One of the group’s primary concerns was finding books in languages other than English. During their time working in schools, Orlando and Sudbrink saw that English is not every student’s native language. The two find it important that every student’s needs are met.
Over 28% of people in Prince George’s County speak a language other than English at home, according to data from the United States Census Bureau.
“[The book drive] is just making sure that every child should have the opportunity to have the same resources in their classroom space,” Sudbrink said.
Sudbrink said she hopes the books they collected can stay in these classrooms for a long time. She also hopes non-English speaking students can use these books to learn and understand English better.
The group installed a free book exchange in the Benjamin Building Courtyard called a Little Free Library. The team got $540 from the Pepsi Enhancement Fund, as well as $115 from the College of Education Senate to fund their little library, according to Orlando.
The group wanted to get students and the wider College Park community more engaged in reading, Orlando said, because sometimes it gets lost as individuals grow older. The free library was unveiled on March 29. The group enjoys seeing the various kinds of books students are reading on campus flowing in and out of their library, according to Orlando
“[The little free library is] actually in the ground in the Benjamin Building’s courtyard is just a way to not only connect with our students and to connect with future students, current students beyond the college of education,” Orlando said. “We just really wanted to connect with them.”