Lake Shore Central School District

Recently, the William G. Houston Middle School/Lake Shore Middle School welcomed a very special guest to the Library!

Author Mat Heagerty rocked the students at William G. Houston Middle School during his visit.

Mat was highly engaging with the students during the morning assembly with the elementary students and the afternoon assembly with the middle school students by taking their suggestions that resulted in an impromptu sketch of characters created from the collaborative minds of Lake Shore students.

Mat spoke of his own struggles in school growing up with dyslexia and how he overcame hearing a lot of “no’s” until he heard the first “yes” throughout his childhood and adult life and never looked back. He also took the time to interact with small groups of students in between assemblies from each middle school grade level. There students learned about the writing and illustrating process, and were also able to draw their own illustrations based on creative peer prompts.

This was all made possible by a $2,000 grant that school Librarian, Christine Waterman, was awarded from the Retired Educators of New York (RENY) that fully covered the entire cost of the author visit and luncheon.

In the award letter, the committee expressed their congratulations saying “Your students are most fortunate to have a teacher so dedicated to making their learning experience so stimulating and memorable”, concluding that this “grant will provide further awareness to the parents and community of the good work being done in the Lake Shore School District.”

It was a wonderful opportunity to be able to invite the fourth and fifth grade students from each elementary building and the feedback from those teachers, librarians and students was exceptional and they loved it. Some elementary teachers even used the author's drawing from the assembly as a prompt for a writing lesson. In addition, a generous donation was made from the Lake Shore Central Teacher’s Association that was used to purchase the author’s books that were given out to students to further promote our literacy initiative. I am truly grateful for the support from my peers and do believe it was a memorable, engaging learning experience for our students.