Reich College of Education

Once again this past fall, the Reich College of Education’s (RCOE) Appalachian Educators club and Public School Partnership (PSP) collaborated to bring books to the classrooms virtually.

As part of the Outreach and Philanthropy Committee of the club, elementary education majors and committee co-chairs, Madison Goodwin and Sydney Owens, led the project “App Ed Reads” to create a video collection of 13 students reading children's books aloud for PK-5 students. Due to COVID-19, students majoring in education haven't had as many opportunities to partner with surrounding schools, particularly in the volunteer capacity. 

“We wanted our education majors to not only engage with the community by sharing some of their favorite holiday and classic children's books, but also practice accessing materials in the university’s Instructional Materials Center (IMC) that can be used to enrich their teaching and lesson plans in many of their curriculum and instruction classes,” said Goodwin.

Each of the books selected was published by Scholastic Inc. with redistribution permissions acquired by the Director of PSP, Dr. Betsy Rosenbalm, and available for student check out in the IMC. Students then pre-recorded videos of them reading their selected book. The videos were uploaded to the RCOE’s YouTube channel, and a specific playlist was shared with elementary teachers in the PSP districts.

“The Public School Partnership and the Appalachian Educators Club have a real treat in store for our partner schools,” said Rosenbalm. “Teachers will now be able to choose and play videos from a variety of read-alouds. We hope that our partnering elementary students in these PK-5 classrooms will enjoy watching our RCOE members read to them.”

“Our pre-service undergraduate education majors enjoyed this literacy project, and they look forward to adding to this virtual storytelling collection in the Spring of 2022,” added Rosenbalm.

In addition to Rosenbalm, librarian Jewel Davis assisted with this project. “With their help, we were able to launch a new semester of extra-curricular reading enrichment for our pre-service teachers, as well as kiddos currently in classrooms in the area,” noted Goodwin.

The PSP is a strong collaborative program between the university and area public schools to improve education. Other programs through the PSP are the Mountaineer Readers program, the NBCTApps program, APPVisory and Program Advisory Teams, the North Carolina New Teacher Support Program, and biannual Partnership Mini-Grant opportunities. 

Housed in the James Center for Student Success and Advising, the Appalachian Educators Club is open to all education majors and anyone who is interested in supporting education. This project was part of the Outreach Committee, which plans events and activities around K-12 school visits to campus. 

The IMC is a model Pre-K – 12 school media center serving App State students, faculty, and staff, as well as area educators and community members. The center is located in the Belk Library.

Check out the complete list of readers and books:

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• Features
• Public School Partnership
• James Center for Student Success and Advising