Location

University Park Elementary School
554 Loftus Road
Fairbanks, Alaska 99709

Contact

Kyra Aizstrauts, Principal
Phone: 907-479-6963
E-mail: kaizstrauts@northstar.k12.ak.us

Accomplishing Cultural Diversity Through Family Reading

University Park is in the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District. It is a very diverse school; of 250 K–6 students, 66 percent are Caucasian, 20 percent Alaska Native, and the others include many other cultural groups, including Asians and Latinos/Latinas. Although many students live in the city, many other students live in outlying rural areas.

A project that has been very successful in bringing together families of all cultures to participate in their children's reading is the Accomplishing Cultural Diversity Through Reading project. The first-grade teachers put together a grant "in a day" to operate a weekend reading program that focuses on multicultural reading, in which families read books together.

In January of the last two years, the first-grade teachers have had a pajama party to kick off the program. Children come in their pajamas with family members and can bring a blanket and a favorite stuffed animal. After a presentation to introduce the program and talk about the books, the children can select a book, cuddle up in the library with their parents, and begin reading. The second year of the grant, the teachers added a presentation that included parents teaching dances and songs from such different cultures as Yup'ik and Korean.

The expectation for the program is that the child will choose a book for the weekend, read the book with their family at home, and the parent and child will complete a reading log to record their comments about the book, and what they learned. Scholastic Books has a list of multicultural books from which the teachers ordered 50 books per classroom.

"We got wonderful feedback," says first-grade teacher Jeannie Nelson. "The parents wanted to read more books about Alaska Native culture, and we were able to order these books from Scholastic the following year. The books stimulated much conversation between parent and child, many families identified with things in the book, and the books also enabled families to become more enlightened about different cultures."

This project, coordinated and planned by the first-grade teachers, is just one example of how University Park is partnering with families, but one that is most rewarding. "This has been the highlight of my career," exclaims Nelson.