Middle School Kicks Off Literary Month with World Read Aloud Day

2/1/2019

On Friday, February 1, students in the fifth and sixth grades began Literary Month with a World Read Aloud Day celebration.

Faculty and students gathered in Doc Wilson Hall for a 30-minute event filled with stories read aloud, and aimed to connect those stories to the School’s mission of being “a power for good in the world.”

Head of Middle School Tasha Elsbach shared a take on the classic Aesop's Fable of the lion and the mouse, the moral of which was that even little things can make a big difference. Louisa Knauss ’26 then read a passage from the series Wings of Fire, and Nikita Montgomery '25 read part of a story aloud in Russian, sharing that it is a language his parents taught him.

Judy Murphy, the School’s librarian who worked with Middle School teachers Chris Mizell and Nina Pick to organize the event, began the morning by noting that while reading aloud is a fun activity, it is also something that not everyone around the world has the opportunity to do, with 759 million adults lacking basic reading and writing skills. “Literacy,” she said, “supports basic human rights. The use of literacy to ‘be a power for good in the world’ is easily recognizable as a key component of our mission statement.”

Mizell agrees with Murphy that while reading aloud is an enjoyable activity — “Everyone likes being read to,” he noted — the World Read Aloud Day celebration speaks to the heart of the School’s mission. “If we, as a school, are thinking about what it means to be a power for good in the world,” said Mizell, “I think it starts with being willing to listen to someone else’s story.”

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To learn about other events taking place throughout Literary Month, please click here.