|
by Melonee McKinney
Mary
French steps into a third-grade math class at Edward E.
Taylor Elementary School with a big cardboard box and a smile.
After passing out a new, blue Webster’s Classic Reference
Library Dictionary to each student, French asks the children
to put their names in the inside front cover. Then she urges
each child to think of a word to look up.
A hand flies up. Terry Taylor, 9, wants
to look up “kindness.” Taylor reads the definition
aloud and before she can finish, Shanyelle Davis, also 9,
wants to look up “astonished.”
French helps the students find the word,
read the definition, and then instructs them to put a check
mark beside the word to show it has been learned. The students
let out a collective, “Thank you, Mrs. French,”
before the Dictionary Lady leaves.
French loves words. She loves them so much,
in fact, that her life is devoted to giving them to children.
Her personal goal is to change the dynamics of education—and
she is doing it one dictionary at a time.
Feeling of power
French runs what she calls The Dictionary
Project, which aims to put a dictionary in the hands of every
South Carolina third-grade student.
Many of those little hands might otherwise
not hold a wordbook, particularly in less-affluent schools.
And they’re at an age when learning and understanding
new words are crucial to the rest of a child’s education.
That’s precisely why French chose
third-graders as Dictionary Project recipients. Second-graders
are too young; they’re just beginning to recognize words,
she says. And by the fourth grade, students already have begun
the bad habit of guessing how to spell words.
“In third grade, there are so many
words they want to know, but they are not yet into reading
whole books. They are just interested in words,” she
says. “It gives them a feeling of power when they can
read a word. It gives them a sense of satisfaction. They feel
some consolation in it. They feel like they are getting smarter
and they like it.”
Learning guide words and alphabetical order
helps build a child’s vocabulary and ultimately helps
them learn sentences, says teacher Kimberly Simon.
The dictionaries’ effects reach beyond
the classroom, says Debbie Bailey, school principal. “We
try at this age to get words in their long-term memory. They
need a good source for words, and not just at school,”
Bailey says. “They need to have access at home, too.
It’s nice for these kids to have something of their own.”
Margaret Tucker, science lab instructor
at nearby John P. Thomas Elementary, watches the newfound
enthusiasm in her room, smiles and notes, “You realize
we won’t be able to get them out of these dictionaries
the rest of the day.”
Teacher Mary Smith absorbs her students’
enthusiasm as they explore words in their new dictionaries.
She turns to French and asks, “Does the art teacher get
a dictionary, too?” Of course.
‘If she can do it, so can I’
French’s Dictionary Project originated
as a challenge in her local newspaper where a letter to the
editor told of a woman who participated in a similar program
and encouraged others to do the same. The woman in the letter
funded her project by sending letters to businesses, making
beaded jewelry, and selling Christmas cards drawn by children.
French took the challenge—on a much
grander scale. “I couldn’t do the jewelry or the
Christmas cards, but I did try writing businesses,” French
says. “I wrote to all the supermarkets and banks just
to see if I would get a response.”
One supermarket chain responded that it
would like to support her but needed a copy of her 501(c)3
number—meaning her organization is designated as charitable
and nonprofit by the Internal Revenue Service. “At the
time I didn’t know what it was or why I needed it,”
she says.
She learned how to establish a nonprofit
organization, filed the necessary paperwork to the IRS, and
waited. Several months later, she became the administrator
of her very own nonprofit organization and holder of a $1,200
check from Publix supermarkets. The money was enough to buy
dictionaries for the Summerville, S.C., school district.
She negotiated with book publisher McGraw-Hill
to buy soft-cover dictionaries at a reduced price of 75 cents
to $1 each, allowing her to maximize donations. For the last
two years, she has distributed Webster’s Classic Reference
Library Dictionary and Webster’s Classic Reference Library
Dictionary, Encyclopedic Edition.
“I wanted to do this from the beginning
because I like words and just thought this isn’t going
to be hard to do,” French says. “There was no complicated
budget. It just was very doable to me.”
French already had distributed dictionaries
to about 2,500 students when she decided to add the larger
Charleston County School System, with about 4,000 third-graders.
“By Charleston, I had half of the
state finished, and I thought, ‘What am I going to do
now?’” French says. She decided to take her Dictionary
Project statewide.
By the end of 2000, she had done it. Every
third-grader in South Carolina had his or her own dictionary.
Since then, French has begun working with Rotary Clubs in
Texas, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and North Carolina, placing
dictionaries with more than 300,000 third-graders. She also
has doubled the project’s income every year.
And she plans to make her project a national
one. After a story about The Dictionary Project ran in The
Wall Street Journal, French received more than 50 queries
from people interested in participating.
“These people always wanted to have
their own nonprofit and just didn’t know how to do it,”
she says. “They read my story in The Wall Street Journal
and thought, ‘If she can do it, so can I.’”
French runs the program out of her Mount
Pleasant, S.C., house, near Charleston, where it’s not
unusual to see thousands of dictionaries stacked in her garage.
She spends at least six hours a day corresponding via e-mail
with volunteers, donors, schools and other interested parties,
as well as writing grants, doing the accounting, and delivering
dictionaries all over the state.
And she does it all for nothing in return.
Except, of course, a deep sense of satisfaction.
No end in sight
Bob Pityo, a Cedar Grove, N.J., retiree
and active Rotary Club member, heard about French’s project
and has since handed out 10,000 dictionaries in his state.
Of 54 Rotary Clubs in his region, 20 are involved in French’s
Dictionary Project—a number Pityo plans to double.
That shouldn’t be difficult; his volunteers
like seeing the students’ reactions to their gift.
“The kids act like they are getting
a piece of cake or something,” he says. “The members
enjoy it because it brings them into the classrooms and not
only allows them to have an impact on the students, but the
teachers and even the parents. Who knows where this is going
to stop?”
Dominic Boyles, a J.P. Thomas Elementary
student, assures French that her efforts are appreciated.
“With my dictionary,” she says, “I am going
to find words that you say to people to show respect—like
‘thanks’ and stuff.”
Melonee McKinney is a feature writer
based in Franklin, Tenn.
|
