Former National Teacher of the Year donates more than 1,000 books to school where she taught
Former Luther Burbank Middle School teacher and National Teacher of the Year Rebecca Mielwocki shows some of the $5,000 worth of books she donated, through Scholastic, to her former school in Burbank on Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2015. About 1,000 common core curriculum books were dived up for the 47 teachers and counselors on campus. Mielwocki is currently coordinator of secondary induction for the Burbank School District.
Teachers and students at Luther Burbank Middle School have access to 1,000 more books this week after former National Teacher of the Year and former Luther teacher Rebecca Mieliwocki donated them to the school.
After doing consulting work for the company Scholastic recently, Mieliwocki was given a choice of where to donate $5,000 worth of books.
Even though she is now a teacher on special assignment at Burbank Unified coaching fellow teachers, the 2012 National Teacher of the Year decided to send the books to Luther, where she began teaching in 2002.
“I was thrilled to say, ‘Let this be my legacy,’” she said.
In an era where many tout the need for the latest technology, book donations still play a key role in the learning process, she said, citing a study conducted this year by the Paper + Packaging Board that found 97% of readers prefer to read on the printed page.
“Even though they have smartphones, they have tablets, they have e-readers, they prefer to hold, to carry and to interact with the printed text. As a matter of fact, 93% of all 13- through 18-year-olds carry a book with them for pleasure-reading daily,” she said. “So, paper is the past, the present and the future.”
Luther’s library coordinator, Dana Colbern-Kullman, separated the books into 47 bins, giving each of the school’s 46 teachers a bin of anywhere from 25 to 30 books to add to their classroom libraries.
The final bin was filled with several copies of the book “Wonder” by author R.J. Palacio for the school’s academic counselors to check out to students.
Colbern-Kullman spent weeks separating the books by grade level and tailoring them to each teacher’s subject, recognizing many titles as ones she’s read before, as she regularly reads the books she checks out to students in the library.
While she said there is use for e-books, she prefers printed ones.
“You can always have books, even in an apocalypse, whereas, maybe you won’t even have electricity,” Colbern-Kullman said.
Seventh-grade social studies teacher Stefanie Enokian said that today’s students “are not living in a paper world. They’re living in an electronic world, so it’s good to be able to put more paper books in their hands.”
Enokian is encouraged by the additional books, which will provide more information her students can reference when they work on writing projects in class.
“This is true nonfiction text that they can really embrace, so I think it will be really exciting for them,” she said.