High School’s Staff, Students to Unite for ‘Night’: NIAGARA FALLS
By Paul Westmoore, The Buffalo News, N.Y.
Sep. 10–NIAGARA FALLS — When Niagara Falls High School’s 2,300 students arrive at school today, they won’t be the only people getting homework.
“Everyone, including all our teachers and other staff — all the adults — will be asked to read Elie Wiesel’s book ‘Night’ over the next five weeks. It’s a wonderful firsthand account about the experience of a Holocaust survivor,” said Mark Laurrie, the school’s chief education administrator.
“We’re doing it to promote literacy, to inspire kids to read and show them a book is not just an isolated thing you do for English class. It involves many other things including social issues, history and an appreciation for other people from different cultures,” he said.
“Not only students, but all 300 members of our staff will be reading it. Even the Board of Education and our superintendent. We’ve purchased copies for everybody. We even have copies available for parents to read,” Laurrie said.
The idea came from the teaching staff, which wants to encourage students to read more and provide them with role models by having adults read the same nonfiction book, he said.
English teacher Amy Chiarella said the school’s English teachers have already selected books for the community to read over the next three years. She said George Orwell’s novel “Animal Farm” will be read by everyone next fall, Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451″ in 2009-10 and Sandra Cisneros’ “House on Mango Street” in 2010-11.
She said “Night” is a good book to start with because it ties in with the high school curriculum both in English and global history, courses every student has to pass on the Regents exams in order to graduate.
She said the reading of “Night” will be accompanied by other activities such as bringing in someone from the Jewish Community Center in Buffalo to speak and showing the Oprah Winfrey show that featured Wiesel, who spent some of his teen years during World War II in the German death camp at Auschwitz and the concentration camp at Buchenwald.
She said the hope is that students will learn to enjoy discussing books just like they love to talk about their favorite music and movies.
“It opens up dialogue between people when you are all reading the same thing,” said library-media specialist Barbara Rogers. “Students should be able to talk to anyone in the building — even the adults — about it. And hopefully if they see everyone reading it, they will realize reading is a good habit to get into.”
Chiarella said the school made its first community read “Night” because it’s cross-curricular, involving both English and social studies “so kids can see you are not just reading a book, but a book that discusses major issues. It also gives them a nonfiction book to read, which many kids don’t get a lot of exposure to.”
pwestmoore@buffnews.com
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