Greetings of “hola” and “hello” sing out from the Harris Elementary School office where principal Norma Huerta-Kelley works.
After serving the neighborhood for over 70 years, Harris Elementary opened its doors in 1993 as a dual language school and now serves 321 students from Early Childhood to Grade 5.
As a bilingual immersion school, Harris follows a dual language curriculum. Students’ first language is either Spanish or English and they learn the district curriculum in both, achieving at high levels in the two languages.
Several times throughout the school year, students excitedly receive the books they chose through the Book Trust program. Book Trust works closely with a long-standing book distribution partner to ensure both bilingual and Spanish-language titles are available to students. “It’s very sweet to watch the kids be able to read books in their own language,” shares Norma.
Over the many years Book Trust has partnered with Harris, parents and caregivers have told Norma they don’t have a library at home. For her school, Norma explains that “Book Trust is a beautiful way for children to fill a library of bilingual books at home… so Book Trust is a big deal for us!”
Book series like Dog Man, Wings of Fire, and Snapdragon are some of Harris Elementary School’s fifth graders favorites to choose and own through Book Trust. One fifth grade class recently talked about what Book Trust means to them. “I feel like Book Trust has encouraged me to read all types of genres,” said one fifth grader. Another acknowledged that Book Trust has helped him to “read more novels instead of graphic novels and go outside of [his] comfort zone.” Most of the fifth graders agreed they would not spend as much time reading if it wasn’t for Book Trust, and they all had requests for access to more books, especially books about sports and mysteries!
Hear more from Norma about the impact of Book Trust at Harris Elementary School.
