'Books they never saw before': Ridgewood Scout brings joy of reading to Paterson students
PATERSON — After lunch on Monday, Lyndsay Walker’s kindergarten students had a surprise waiting for them when they returned to their classroom: a bright orange bookcase filled with dozens of children’s stories.
The youngsters picked books that appealed to them, then sat down on a large floor blanket to thumb through the pages.
“This is so great,” said Walker, the lead kindergarten teacher at Paterson Charter School for Science and Technology, when the books arrived while the children were at lunch.
Walker’s students were among the beneficiaries of a Boy Scout project by 16-year-old Joshua Fishkin of Ridgewood in his effort to earn Eagle Scout status.
With some carpentry guidance from his father, Fishkin built 12 bookcases and collected donations of more than 5,000 books, so that each class at the kindergarten and first grade campus of the charter school would have a new mini-library.
Fishkin said he was inspired by his own love of reading and said he hoped he could pass that passion on to the youngsters in Paterson. He said that if just one student got hooked on reading from his donation, his project would be a success.
Every classroom at the charter school’s lower-grade campus on Main Street already had small libraries. But Fishkin’s donation more than doubled their size.
“Now the kids will have access to books they never saw before,” said Victoria Rossi, lead teacher for first grade at the charter school. “It’s amazing.”
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Fishkin said he picked the charter school because a family friend teaches in the upper grades. He said his connection to Paterson goes back to when he was in seventh grade and did volunteer tutoring at the Oasis nonprofit program in the city.
The first step for the project, the teen said, was setting up a GoFundMe page to get donations to cover the costs. That raised $2,000, more than he said he expected.
“The fundraising was the easiest part,” he said.
Next, the Boy Scout and his father went to a lumber company to get the wood for the shelves. Over a two-week span in August, Fishkin said, he built the shelves, with direction from his father. Some days, the teen said, he spent more than eight hours on the construction. Each bookcase took about four hours, and that didn’t include the painting, including two coats of primer and two coats of paint.
Fishkin said he picked orange because that’s his favorite color.
“I’ve never seen an orange bookcase before,” noted Walker, the kindergarten teacher.
Of course, bookcases without books aren’t much good. Fishkin said his mother used some of her work contacts to solicit donations of about 1,000 new books from publishers. After that, he said, he organized a community book collection drive in September that generated another 4,000 books.
But his work wasn’t done yet. Fishkin and about 10 other Scouts spent a full weekend day sorting through the books, using apps on their phones to determine which would be appropriate for beginner readers in kindergarten and which would be right for first grade students.
Fishkin and his family said they are ready to conduct annual donation drives in the future, along with several friends from Ridgewood, to restock the 12 bookcases he delivered to the charter school on Monday.
Joe Malinconico is editor of Paterson Press.
Email: editor@patersonpress.com
This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Paterson NJ students receive new books from Ridgewood NJ Scout
