A $2,496.00 donation from the Mama Cats parent teacher organization “pays for students in Eagle Grove and their participation in the reading buddies program,” said Rachel Cahalan, who awarded the check to Reading Buddies, Inc. founder Deb Townsend on the Mama Cats behalf.
“Mama Cats is very much focused on extra activities for students and supporting teachers. And we think this is an excellent program that Eagle Grove has incorporated into their curriculum, and we wanted to support that,” Cahalan explained.
“Up to this point I have never had any financial assistance from anyone,” Deb said, while pointing out that she has received lots of help in the form of donated supplies and labor. But financially, “this has all come from our personal finances.”
“This means we can get all the cute fabric and the good patches,” Townsend explained, pointing out that good fabric and patches can get expensive. “And this means we can continue the program for the kids. Which is huge!”
Over the past few years, Cahalan noted, the Mama Cats have been picking up steam. They’ve organized school supplies drives, dances, and sporting events including the Washington Wizards performance, and many, many fundraisers.
The Reading Buddies program has been picking up steam too, Townsend explained. The program is now in First and Second Grade classes in Eagle Grove, in First Grade in Webster City, and in First Grade in Humboldt. And, they’ve formed a 501-C3 non-profit group, so donations can be tax deductible.
Townsend was amazed they’ve gotten so far on a shoestring budget. The Mama Cats donation, and others they hope will come in now that donors can take the cost off their tax bills, will help them to go farther. “All of our people who make bears are volunteers,” she related. “If we didn’t have that I don’t think we could really keep going. And that saves us a lot of money. But there are still costs, and those have been going up.”
It all began very humbly. Townsend recalled that she started sewing in 2nd grade. “My Mom used to sew, and made our clothes. And I would bother her. ‘I want to sew!'” So finally, she recalled, her Mother had sat her down at her sewing machine, taken out an old kitchen towel, and drawn a squiggly line on it. When she could follow the line with the thread, her Mother told her, she could sew something for real. Today, she makes all her own patterns, and is teaching her grandchildren to sew.
When she sees kids reading to their buddies, teddy bears she designed and in most cases, sewed, “I just get such a kick out of that,” Townsend said, enthusiastically.
Of course, Townsend knows she can’t do it all on her own, and she can’t do it forever. She’s working with the Eagle Grove High School to find students who could work with the younger kids, and she plans to follow the same approach in other schools as the program spreads. Ensuring that there will always be people who know how to use the Reading Buddies system to help kids learn and enjoy reading. “Reading Buddies isn’t just bears,” Townsend pointed out, “there’s a cohesive curriculum that makes it easier for the students.”
Townsend said that a long career teaching art had taught her to build a curriculum. But her time teaching at the school for the blind made her “think about other ways to learn.’ It challenged her to think outside the box, to figure out, “how can we associate a concept with an image,” so the blind students could envision in their minds what their eyes couldn’t see.
That experience ultimately culminated in the Reading Buddies program, which combines reading lessons and activities, with a comforting tactile object, which kids can connect to on a deeper level. That, Townsend said, is the “secret sauce”.
What’s next for the program? Townsend said she’d like to expand the bilingual aspects of it, to better serve both Spanish and English speaking kids, noting that in her program “our Spanish speaking kids learn to speak English, but our English speaking kids also learn a little Spanish. So we’re able to speak to each other.” That’s a concept Townsend said deserves more development.
And a website will be coming soon, with resources for families. She’s also thinking about developing content for publications, to help kids learn through entertainment, and to help them begin to pay attention to current events.
And, of course, she plans to expand the program to more and more schools around the nation.
The point of the whole thing is that reading brings understanding, and entertainment, and that leads to a happy, successful life, Townsend explained. “I want kids to read. I want them to learn by reading. I want them to love to read. And I want them to read throughout their lives. So they can succeed in their lives.”
