EVERYDAY HERO: Former Bartow Mayor Steve Githens takes thousands of dictionaries to Polk County third graders.

BARTOW, Fla. — The former mayor of Bartow loves passing on his passion for the power of words. Steve Githens has been delivering thousands of special dictionaries to third-grade students in Polk County for many years. On a recent morning, Githens was loading up a dolly with boxes of the books from the back of his car and taking them inside Eagle Lake Elementary School.

“So, they say there are 120 students here at Eagle Lake Elementary,” said Githens as he loaded the books onto his dolly.

“I’ve probably been in and out of the school ten times over the years I’ve been doing this dictionary program,” he said. Githens raises funding for the Bartow Rotary Club project that he took over about 14 years ago. He was able to raise about $20,000 for this year’s program. That allowed him to purchase 5,000 of the books that cost about $4 each. Once inside the school’s media center, Githens started pulling the dictionaries from the boxes. “Although we call them dictionaries, they actually have a fair amount of information inside of them,” he said. That includes the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, maps and short biographies of U.S. presidents, among other things. Once the students arrived at the media center, teachers helped Githens pass out the books, and he delivered a one-hour presentation about them to the students who sat on the floor.

“But if you want to dedicate yourself to educating yourself, there is no telling where you will go, right?” said Githens to the children.

He had the children follow along with their books as he pointed out the contents. “A dot. You mean a period? I think a period works,” he said as he went through a section about punctuation. Githens believes that learning words in a dictionary will give the kids power to excel in the world around them. “I do hope that when they open it up, they will learn every time they touch the book,” he said. “And the more words, the bigger the vocabulary, the more the power.” Student Noah Green loved his dictionary and the presentation. “I think it was amazing. Because I read books a lot and this one is way better than any book I have read,” he said.  

BY Rick Elmhorst  (Article credit: Spectrum News 9)

(Photo Courtesy of Spectrum News 9)