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Book ’em, literacy pioneer declares

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It’s not easy running a reading program in Michigan’s “Copper Country.” Located in the Upper Peninsula alongside Lake Superior, the area has nine school districts spread over about 800 square miles. Nevertheless, three times a year each of the area’s 440 third-graders receive a book, compliments of the Kiwanis Club of the Copper Country, Houghton; its sponsored programs family, and Reading Is Fundamental (RIF). Coordinating the proje4ct is Kiwanian Keith Baldwin, whose efficiency and creativity earned him recognition this past year as one of five RIF regional volunteers of the year.

In 1980, a Copper Country Kiwanian suggested the club organize a RIF project. At that time, Keith was serving as the club’s youth services committee chairman and undertook the responsibility of asking school administrators if there would be any value in starting a RIF program. With the eduator4s’ unanimous and enthusiastic support, the Copper Country Kiwanians established on of the first Kiwanis/RIF partnerships in the United States.

Today, Reading Is Fundamental is a member of Kiwanis International’s Priority One Advisory Council. And Keith has remained an active RIF volunteer throughout the past 25 years.

“The United States Army veteran and Michigan Tech University physics professor emeritus … used his ingenuity to discover better ways to get thousands of books and reading motivation activities to third-graders in nine school districts across an 800-mile rural area,” states a RIF “Volunteer of the Year” announcement.

As the program has progressed through the past 25 years, it has added volunteers from the Michigan Tech University Circle K club, an MTU fraternity, and area Key Clubs. They raise funds. They deliver the books. They conduct reading parties. They read to children. Recently they introduced a new variation—a reversals—of the RIF program.

“This year,” Keith says, “we started a contest among all the third grades in which each class cooperatively composed a story that started with the line: “Once upon a time there was a magical book that hopped off the shelf into the hands of. …”

The Kiwanis family dubbed the activity “Writing Is Fundamental” and refer to the writing/reading combination as “RIF ’n’ WIF.”

“RIF has become a right of passage for our third-graders,” Keith says. “The younger children hear about it and look forward to it. Often these younger children have read books their older siblings brought home. The program has operated long enough that occasionally we run into adults who participated in the program when they were third-graders. They have fond memories and very often they still have the books.