McPhee Elementary School students learned how the educational crop of reading can help them harvest all of their dreams and goals.
Nebraska First Lady Suzanne Pillen visited the Mustangs this fall as part of the ongoing Bushels of Stories program. She read “Right This Very Minute: A Table-to-Farm Book About Food and Farming” to a pair of fifth grade classes. She has teamed up with the Nebraska Farm Bureau Foundation to share the value of literacy and agriculture in schools across the state.
McPhee fifth graders Arayah and Great said they enjoyed the presentation. They felt it was a good reminder of how worthy it is to know many words.
“Reading’s very important,” Arayah said. “If you grow up and you don’t read that much, then you might be stuck when you go to college. But if you do read, you will be very good in college.”
“Reading is very important because it teaches you what to do,” Great said. “If you’re a doctor, you need to know how to say words and know what they mean.”
McPhee Principal Theresa Haack said McPhee teachers have done a wonderful job of helping their students cultivate a love of reading. She said visits from former educators like Pillen are a way to reinforce that concept to the Mustangs.
“Reading is the basis of everything they’re going to learn in the future,” Haack said. “It’s so important for them to hear how essential literacy is.”
The McPhee classes joined a long list of Lincoln Public Schools students who have listened to literacy-based presentations. Community volunteers from organizations such as Lincoln Fire and Rescue, Lincoln Police Department, Lincoln City Libraries, Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) for Lancaster County and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln have read books in recent years. Many school buildings also host family engagement nights that provide reading-themed activities for students.
Pillen encouraged the Mustangs to take every chance to develop their reading skills. She spent several minutes working through each page of “Right This Very Minute” with them. The book, written by Lisl H. Detlefsen and illustrated by Renee Kurilla, explains how farmers, ranchers, orchardists and specialty producers such as beekeepers provide food for everyone to eat.
“Reading is something that can take you anywhere you want to go,” Pillen said. “It gives you so many opportunities in your future.”
Both 45-minute sessions included Nebraska’s role in the country’s agricultural landscape. The Mustangs correctly answered questions about the state’s top two crops, which are corn and soybeans.
The classes discovered that there are many other crops grown across the state. These include wheat, dry beans, grain sorghum, alfalfa, potatoes and sugar beets. Nebraska Panhandle farmers grow more than 1.3 million tons of sugar beets each year.
“I learned a lot about Nebraska,” Arayah said. “I learned there is actually sugar in Nebraska. I didn’t know that.”
Pillen also focused her presentations on the importance of setting, chasing and achieving dreams. She asked students what they wanted to do when they became adults. They responded by listing professions such as doctors, nurses, teachers, paleontologists, scientists and farmers.
Pillen said she was impressed with the wide variety of answers. She told everyone to maintain their optimistic outlooks throughout their lives.
“Having dreams is so important,” Pillen said. “Make sure no one ever tells you that you can’t achieve your dream. You can do anything you dream of.”
Great and Arayah said those words added to the large bushels of daily encouragement they receive from friends and adults at McPhee. Great would like to become a doctor and Arayah is thinking about becoming a scientist. They felt reading could help them make their own dreams become reality one day.
“I learned that you can actually be what you want to be when you grow up,” Great said.
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