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A community outreach initiative for children through William Paterson University’s campus library has received a 2024 Library of Congress Literacy Award. The award recognizes organizations both in the U.S. and abroad that provide exemplary, innovative, and sustainable strategies to promote literacy and reading.
An adaptation of Real Men Read—a national program focused on male mentorship in education—was launched at William Paterson in 2020 by Neil Grimes, curriculum materials librarian at the University’s David and Lorraine Cheng Library. Every year since, during Read Across America Week and throughout the month of March, male administrators, faculty, staff, and students from William Paterson visited preschools and elementary schools either virtually or in-person to read to students. The schools are part of the WP College of Education’s Professional Development Schools (PDS) network across northern New Jersey.
Over the last five years, more than 4,000 students were reached by the University’s Real Men Read program.
William Paterson is the first to create an academic library-led Real Men Read program.
Most preschool and elementary school teachers are women, and many single-parent households are mother-only households, Grimes notes. He subsequently launched Real Men Read hoping that a male role model who values reading would inspire more young boys to value reading, too.
The University’s Real Men Read program was selected as one of five honorees in the “emerging strategies” category of the Library of Congress Literacy Awards, “for demonstrating significant creativity and promise in its approach to literacy relative to its early stages of development,” writes Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden.
Grimes says he is very proud of the program, that members of the WP community happily step up to volunteer for it, and that teachers and students see value in it. School No. 28 in Paterson was so inspired by the program that the students there made a logo for Real Men Read, the principal had it printed on t-shirts, and the next day, every male employee from teachers to custodial staff wore the shirts and visited classrooms to read aloud to students.
“The Real Men Read program at WP has the potential to reach even more preschool and elementary schools in the northern New Jersey region in the years ahead, obtain more volunteers from the University community, and inspire students to grow a lifelong love of reading and interact with positive male role models from our own WP community,” Grimes says.
He will accept the award on behalf of the University during a celebratory event on October 30 at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
09/25/24
