Sumner Rotary provides dictionaries to students

By Daniel Nash

The Courier-Herald

The often heard answer, “look it up,” might make a student’s eyes roll whenever they ask a question of their teacher, but the experience of seeking and finding an answer for oneself can go far toward giving a child knowledge and self-reliance.

To this end, the Rotary Club of Sumner has provided 801 dictionaries to third-grade students attending the nine elementary schools in the Sumner and Dieringer school districts. Thirty-one members from Rotary delivered the dictionaries to students during November.

The number of dictionaries marked a record-high in the program’s three years.

Tina Pries, a Rotarian and the executive director of Stafford Suites senior living, began the Dictionary Project in 2007. She borrowed the idea from a Rotary peer in Hawaii who had instituted a similar program for students there, she said.

“I thought it was such a great idea,” Pries said. “I already ran another school program (Service Before Self for middle school students) for Rotary and this seemed like a wonderful opportunity for the club to support the elementary schools.”

The specific dictionary given to students is A Student’s Dictionary, which was purchased by Rotary in bulk from the Web site for the national Dictionary Project. The Dictionary Project partners with philanthropic organizations across the country to provide dictionaries to children.

“The Rotary Club of Sumner feels a child cannot do his or her best work without a dictionary,” Pries said. “Children deserve the best teachers and resources. If we set our sights on anything less, we will be disappointed with the results.”

A Student’s Dictionary was chosen by Pries because it contains a breadth of information beyond word spellings and pronunciations, she said. The back of the volume contains appendices with biographies of American presidents, the founding documents, maps of states, continents and planets, periodic tables, multiplication tables, metric conversions and a guide to the sign language alphabet. The last page of the book, and the students’ favorite page, Pries said, contains the longest word in the English language, a chemical name that prints at 1,909 letters.

On receiving their dictionaries, students are administered the Oath of the Dictionary Owner – “I swear to use my dictionary every day to become a very good reader, a very good writer and a lifelong learner forever and ever.”

For information about the Dictionary Project and other Rotary Club projects with local schools, contact Rotary Club President Trudy Bleiler at 253-826-4867.

To comment on this story or view it online go to www.blscourierherald.com. Reach Daniel Nash at dnash@courierherald.com or 360-802-8210.

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