The goal of Maureen’s Readers is to promote and develop interest in reading in elementary grade students. It’s not only important for kids to develop reading skills early, but also to develop interest in reading early. How we accomplish this will be a work in progress. Our first action was associated with the Scholastic Book Fair at Rice Lake Elementary, Maple Grove, MN. The Book Fair is quite an extravaganza. Students bring money and shop for books. However, there are students who would not be able to buy a book because of financial issues. Fortunately, the Parent Teacher Organization has set up a voucher system for them. Designated kids are given a voucher worth $8 to buy a book. I proposed that these students be able to get the book they wanted, regardless of price, and Maureen’s Readers would pick up the extra cost. However, it was recommended that a cap be put on the voucher to encourage kids to pick books that are more amenable to improve reading skills instead of books that had toys, audio, etc. attached to them. So we upped the voucher to $12 for the Book Fair. This was a good way for us to start, working within an already established program. Giving a book to a child to call their own was the ultimate goal. Going forward we anticipate participating in future Book Fairs at Rice Lake and expand to other schools.
The other entity that we are very interested in supporting is the concept of Book Club. The Parent Teacher Organization of Rice Lake Elementary will seek approval for a formal school wide Book Club for the next academic year. Some teachers have intermittently started Book Club with very positive results. We think this is a very good way to get kids interested in reading. Our plan is to support any effort to organize Book Club and we will support this effort financially. Teachers usually have had to buy Book Club books with their own money or try to cobble together enough books from the media center. Eliminating financial road blocks will, hopefully pave the way for more implementation of Book Club in schools.
Going forward we invite suggestions on how we can stimulate interest in reading in elementary grades. If you like what we are trying to do and would like to help, we invite you to donate to our cause. We will acknowledge all donations on our website. Maureen’s Readers is a 501(3)c organization. This is especially helpful for those that have to take RMD from IRAs.
About Maureen
Maureen (McDermott) Wavrin, mother of Katie, Christopher, and Kelly, was a dedicated teacher for 23 years in the Le Sueur-Henderson school district. Most of that time was spent in a third grade classroom. She was an ardent reader her whole life. She firmly believed that success in school was dependent on good reading skills. She and her teaching team implemented “book club” for their students. This was a hit with them and subsequently contributed to pronounced improvement in reading and comprehension test scores.
Maureen retired from teaching in 2010. The following year I retired from dentistry and shortly thereafter we moved to Maple Grove to be near our grandchildren. We started volunteering at Rice Lake Elementary in 2013 when the grandkids were in Kindergarten. We proceeded to follow them up the grades. In second grade Maureen started a book club and started with a favorite, Charlotte’s Web. The book club was popular with the students and Maureen enjoyed it very much. In the fall of 2015 Maureen developed some health issues and during Christmas break she was diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma, a type of blood cancer. Thus started a two year battle with this disease. Maureen continued to volunteer and do book club despite weekly trips to Mayo for chemotherapy. At first, treatments provided promise and hope was present. However, each treatment regimen eventually failed. Maureen started the 2016 school year volunteering, but had to quit as the treatment regimens became increasingly difficult. By Christmas of 2017 she had exhausted her treatment options and her health deteriorated quickly. On February 27, 2018 she passed away at Mayo Methodist Hospital. She was courageous throughout her fight with this disease. Despite all, she always maintained that her life had been blessed in many ways.
I have continued to volunteer at Rice Lake. I wanted to do something to honor Maureen, this dedicated, kind, selfless teacher and mother. Something that would reflect her ardent dedication to fostering students interest in reading. Something that would be ongoing and sustaining. I had some ideas. Since it would take funds to implement these ideas, my family and I decided to start the non-profit Maureen’s Readers to fund any programs we came up with. Our first project was to subsidize the Rice Lake PTO’s book voucher program for the Spring Book Fair. This enabled students that ordinarily would not be able to obtain books to call their own a chance to do so. This was successful and it was noted that there were some “very happy kids”. We would also like to get some books in the hands of some underserved students before school is out in the spring to encourage summer reading. Also, the PTO at Rice Lake is working on implementing a school wide book club for the next academic year. This would be something Maureen would have enthusiastically supported. Maureen’s Readers would underwrite the cost of this program. Our goal is to do things that stimulate student’s interest in reading. How we accomplish this will be determined going forward by working on project development with ideas we come up and ideas given to us by others. We are in the very rudimentary stages at this point. We would like to distribute books in a thoughtful, organized way and not just “dump” books on the kids just to say we did. We will concentrate our efforts on Rice Lake immediately, but we are open to and in fact will attempt to expand to other schools and programs.
Respectfully Submitted by,
Dr. Dennis L Wavrin in Memory of Maureen Wavrin
Maureen's Readers 