On Wednesday, November 16, ten high school students went over to Freer Elementary to read Thanksgiving books for the kids. 

Surprisingly, this isn’t an annual thing that happens as the idea was brought forward from faculty members at Freer.

Counselor Kelly Stockwell said, “This is the first year we have done this. I had a teacher from Freer that reached out to me asking for some high school readers to celebrate National Young Readers Week (November 14-18, 2022).”

The whole thing was not for a class or grade and instead the students volunteered their own time. 

“We did it for fun. Mrs. Stockwell just asked if we wanted to do this,” student Ian Baker said, who went to Freer.

The ten students who went were Ethan Meece, Ian Baker, Spencer Lacefield, Abby Holland, Joe Bulhman, Kenzie Ferrell, Lily Thebeau, Brendan Weaver, Brock Wallace, and Madison Hard.

They all really enjoyed reading to the Freer kids.

These students were emailed by Mrs. Stockwell two days prior to see if they wanted to do it.

 “I reached out to two of our English teachers asking for recommendations of students who would do well reading to the younger students,” Stockwell said. 

They spent about two hours reading to the little kids.

“We were there from 2nd-4th hours. When we arrived at Freer, Mrs. Dillingham and Mr. Bouzek had a schedule for our students as to which classrooms they were going to visit. They were also given the books to read, which mainly centered around a Thanksgiving theme. Students rotated to multiple classrooms and read their stories to the students,” Stockwell said. 

These students did this, not because they felt obligated too but instead because they actually enjoy entertaining these kids. 

Baker said, “It was an awesome experience that was a lot of fun. The kids really enjoyed it.”

“The kids loved having the (big) kids come and read to them. They all thought that it was amazing,” Freer Principal Charles Bouzek said.

This is something that they want to keep doing because of how much the kids love it.

“We are always wanting and looking to find ways to have the high school students come and hang out with us at Freer,” Bouzek said