#inform-video-player-1 .inform-embed { margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 20px; }
#inform-video-player-2 .inform-embed { margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 20px; }
Tucson Rodeo Foundation volunteers believe reading is fundamental — along with the preservation of the Western way of life.
Once a month, board member Charlene Johnston, “shops” for books in the Friends of the Pima County Library’s store. Other volunteers, Tucson Rodeo ambassadors and Friends of the Pima County Public Library join her.
The books go to Sahuarita, Vail and Tucson elementary school classrooms, where Tucson Rodeo volunteers read them to the children as part of Tucson Rodeo’s Love of Reading Program.
“The kids love it — and they need it,” said Johnston, a former elementary school teacher who founded the program. “They need to know there’s goodness in the world.”
Recently, foundation volunteers donated 11 boxes of books for the initiative. The books will be dispersed to teachers and students at the Ted Walker Youth Day at Old Tucson Studios on Thursday, Jan. 26.
After that, the ambassadors and foundation volunteers will visit classrooms and read the books to the students.
“We work with youth in Southern Arizona to try to grow and educate and profligate the western lifestyle,” said Mark “Butch” Krietmeyer, foundation president.
“We’re trying to give the youth an opportunity to grow, so we work with 4-H and Future Farmers of America. It’s all-around educating youth.”
Volunteers read books of the student’s choosing.
“We’ll put out a box and the kids will walk up and choose a book,” Johnston said. “Then, they go to the next person and the next person comes up and they get to choose a book. When we run out of that box, we bring out another box.”
Johnston chalked up the program’s founding to her deep love of literature and education, and a desire for children to learn more about the world around them. That philosophy is engrained in her. When she was a teacher, she read sections of chapter books to her students after recess.
“We would do a couple of chapters and have quiet time in the classroom,” she said.
“Animals are absolutely amazing, beautiful, powerful creatures and we live in the desert. If we can exist with them and enjoy them and understand them, then we won’t be as afraid of them and we will have respect for them. We’ll know — and our kids will know — not to go up to a roadrunner, not to go up to a lion or a cub, not to pick up a tarantula because they’re big and scary, but to watch them and enjoy what they can teach us. That excites me to no end. Being able to be a part of that education, that is thrilling to me.”
#inform-video-player-3 .inform-embed { margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 20px; }