Standing among a crowd of wide-eyed second graders at Mill Plain Elementary School earlier this month, Vancouver Police Officer Rey Reynolds commanded attention with his booming voice and animated expressions.
“When I first started reading, do you know what my first book was?” His eyes were wide and he smiled as the class answered in unison, naming the book he clutched in his hand: “Green Eggs and Ham!”
Reynolds cracked open the book and began to read, his voice bouncing along to the rhyming verses and his fingers snapping along to the beat. When Sam I Am went underwater, Reynolds spoke as if talking through bubbles. By the end of the book, the students were reciting the words right along with him.
“That was amazing,” 7-year-old Madison Wirth said. “He used impressions about how they felt about it.”
Once a month, members of the Vancouver Police Department and the Clark County Sheriff’s Office visit a school and read with students for the Police Activities League literacy program. Though the officers show off their police vehicles, let the kids meet their police dogs and talk to them about the importance of gun safety — “do not touch it!” — the real point of the event is to get students excited about reading.
“If you’re not up to par by your third-grade year, you’re often behind for the rest of your education,” PAL Executive Director Jenny Thompson said. “We often target second-grade classrooms for that reason.”
After Reynolds finished the story, each kid got to pick out their own book to take home and visited the handful of officers to have them autograph the inside cover.
PAL is a nonprofit organization that works to promote relationships between youth and law enforcement in an effort to empower kids to make life-enriching decisions and to reduce juvenile crime rates. The literacy event, Thompson said, happens October through June and books are funded by donations.
December’s literacy event at Mill Plain Elementary was Officer Dale Banette’s fourth time volunteering. He said he enjoys attending and witnessing the excitement of the kids.
“It’s a nice break from what we see and deal with,” he said. Plus, he said, “it gives them a chance to see we’re good guys.”
On top of helping build that relationship, Banette said, it will help set them up for success.
“We deal with a lot of adults who can’t read,” he said. “Reading is just so important for education for these children. … It will help them throughout their lives.”
Officer Brian Schaffer, who helps coordinate the event for Vancouver police, said that most officers come to the schools for events like these on their days off. And it’s worth it, he added, because every month he hears the same comments from students.
“They just say, ‘This is the best day ever,’ ” he said.
Schaffer said he knows first-hand that coming into the schools makes an impact. A few years ago, a fifth-grader wrote Schaffer a letter explaining that she had previously been afraid of the police because they arrested her mom.
“She said it wasn’t until the PAL literacy event that she was able to see us in a positive light,” he said. “This is exactly why we’re doing this — the fact that she would remember three years down the road.”
