Getting caught lying is not good. Getting caught cheating on your taxes can be excruciating. But getting caught reading can be quite pleasant, particularly on the last Thursday of this month.
Jan. 27 is Family Literacy Day where adults and children alike are being asked to find time to play and have fun with the written word. A big part of the celebration will be the Get Caught Reading initiative said Michele Geistlinger, Literacy for Life’s resource development coordinator.
“We’re going to have different dignitaries going out looking to track readers down,” she said.
This will be happening in Okotoks, High River and Black Diamond, places where it won’t take a lot of looking to nab someone Geistlinger said.
“Our volunteers will be going around in those communities looking for people reading in many different ways,” she said. “A lot of people think you have to be sitting reading a book for it to be literary activity, but there are so many things in everyday life where literacy plays a part. It can be something simple like somebody reading a gas pump.”
The Get Caught Reading volunteers will have a reward for those they trap in the act.
“We have these great big, really recognizable, red bookmarks from Literacy for Life, ” Geistlinger said.
One of the dignitaries who will be out in Okotoks searching for readers is Okotoks Coun. Florence Christophers. She cites cafes and the local recreation centre, where parents sometimes peruse a book while waiting for their child, as a couple of places she may go to nab readers.
Christophers said it’s not difficult for her to find motivation to be involved in the literary cause. She originally believed organizations like Literacy for Life were for older people who never had the opportunity to learn to read when they were younger because they had to drop out of school.
She explained how witnessing her own child’s struggles with the written word have altered that perception.
“I have a daughter who has really struggled to read,” she said of her Grade 3 student. “She didn’t actually really begin to read until the end of Grade 2. She knew at that time she was way behind and it was terribly hard on her self-esteem. It was very painful to watch her struggle to catch on to reading. So I have come to realize that Literacy for Life is not just for people who missed the opportunity to learn how to read but for people who find reading does not come easy.”
Family Literacy Day on Jan. 27 is an event designed to open many people’s eyes to the importance of literacy but not in a heavy handed way. Events happening from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. at the Okotoks Recreation Centre, the Bob Snodgrass Recreation Centre in High River and the Sheep River Library in Black Diamond will go a long way in showing how this year’s literacy day theme of “play” can be incorporated into reading.
Tables will be set up at each location with volunteers demonstrating games and methods children and parents alike can follow to make literacy fun.
Also from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. at these locations children who have a January 2011 Family Literacy Day calendar can drop it off with the activities they’ve completed checked off. Everyone who turns in a calendar will receive a participation reward. Those kids with 20 or more of the activities completed on their calendar will get an additional gift.
Pleased with the way the Family Literacy Day events are shaping up, Geistlinger said she has high hopes for the day. She is grateful for the many partners who have stepped up to aid her organization in making Jan. 27 a memorable celebration of literacy.
“It’s not Just Literacy for Life that is making all this happen, we have whole conglomerate of people here that are working together,” Geistlinger said.
Some, but not all, of the other organizations involved are the Sheep River, Okotoks, High River and Millarville community libraries, the Foothills and Catholic school divisions, Parent Link, the Foothills Community Immigrant Society and AIM (Advocacy In Motion).
Everyone is reminded to try to find something to read on Family Literacy Day and get ready to get busted, in a good way, by one of the Get Caught Reading volunteers.
