Lakewood Creek Elementary Celebrates Reaching Summer Reading Goal

Olympic athletes have to train and work hard so they can be good at what they do and love.

Lakewood Creek Elementary Principal David Brusack took this idea and turned it into the theme for the school’s annual summer reading program.

Each year, Lakewood Creek students log their reading minutes over the summer in an attempt to beat the goal from the previous summer, which this time was 182,000.

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The school organized an assembly with singing the Star Spangled Banner, some guest speaker athletes from Oswego High School, a “relay” course and highlight clips from the Olympics, including times the athletes didn’t succeed.

“Sometimes they didn’t mean their goals,” said Brusack later in the assembly. “But they’re going to get back up and try again.”

Before he announced to the students, who attended two separate assemblies based on grade level, if they made their goal, he had several student athletes talk about their own experiences with school and reading.

Oswego Basketball captain Miles Simelton was asked what his favorite book was growing up.

“Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Suess,” he said. “It taught me if you don’t like something at first, it never hurts to try. And if you still don’t like it, you can appreciate it and have a good attitude after trying.”

The other OHS students included Kelsey Hjorth from cross-country and track and field, Jack Kwiatkowski from football and Amelia Walsh from cheerleading.

The last event of the day was a relay event where teams formed under two teachers, second grade teacher Abby Anderson and first grade teacher Jenny Nagel, to go through an obstacle course. The event included riding on a skateboard, knocking down blocks, rolling an even and odd number amongst other shenninagans.

To see what it might have looked like, Simelton and Kwiatkowski can be seen in the video, but we here at Patch recommend turning down the volume. The students were very excited to cheer for their teams.

The event wrapped up amongst wild cheering as the final reading number was revealed: 225,472.

“The good news is we beat it,” said Brusack over the cheers. “Now we just have to beat it again! Everyone is going to have to participate if we want to beat that!”