JPPSS Superintendent Isaac G. Joseph, left, and JPSB President Cedric Floyd, right, join Kenner Discovery Health Sciences Head of School Patty Glaser and KDHS students who helped the school win the Scholastic challenge.
It’s not hard to tell what most students at Kenner Discovery Health Sciences Academy were doing this summer. Chances are, they used much of those months for reading. The school ranked No. 1 in Louisiana and No. 14 in the world in the 2015 Scholastic Summer Reading Challenge. Students earned the honor by reading over 2,074,424 minutes.
“Our students are competitive, but more importantly they love to read,” said Kenner Discovery librarian Georgia Cuny. “The support of our parents drove the competition over the summer. They posted pictures of their child reading to remind other parents to log their minutes. Teachers would post reminders. We even had a great discussion about summer reading books on the library’s Facebook page. It really was a community effort.”
Kenner Discovery, which was recognized for this award at the October Jefferson Parish School Board meeting, will be listed in the 2016 Scholastic Book of World Records and will receive a commemorative plaque. This is the second time the school has placed No. 1 in the state.
This summer, children from across all 50 states and 28 countries read 286,611,349 million minutes in Scholastic’s 9th annual summer reading program. This free, global summer reading program, created by Scholastic and powered by Energizer, encourages children worldwide to “Power Up & Read” and to log the minutes they spend reading in order to unlock 12 original stories written by favorite children’s authors and earn digital rewards for reading milestones. The program aims to avoid the effects of the “summer slide” – the learning losses which can occur when school is not in session.