Riverhead principal promotes the ‘shear’ joy of reading
Last Friday afternoon, the Roanoke Avenue Elementary School auditorium was a madhouse. Hundreds of students rattled their seats and erupted in cheers, their voices bouncing off the walls. The cause of all the excitement? Watching their principal … get a haircut.
For 20 years, Roanoke Avenue Elementary School principal Thomas Payton has gone to extreme lengths to instill a love of reading in his students. His annual reading challenge isn’t part of the job description — it’s a tradition built on creativity, enthusiasm and quite a bit of good-natured self-sacrifice.
The tradition, like Mr. Payton, came out of the sprawling Clark County school district in Las Vegas — the fifth largest in the nation — which holds an annual weeklong reading campaign around the March 2 birthday of beloved children’s book author Dr. Seuss, born Theodor Seuss Geisel.
For a week, the entire school logs every minute spent reading, whether in classes, at lunch, on the bus or at home. Schools set six- and seven-figure goals, and this year’s goal for Roanoke Avenue students was to collectively read 90,000 minutes.
“It was really big in Vegas,” Mr. Payton said. “So when I came to Riverhead, I thought it would be cool to bring it with me.”
It started simply enough. “The first year, I got my head shaved and that was it,” Mr. Payton recalled last week, moments before settling into a barber’s chair on stage. “The next year, I dressed as a chicken and did the chicken dance. From there, it just kept growing. I dressed as a clown. One year, I rode in on a tricycle. Another year, the kids turned me into a human [ice cream] sundae. Every time, I had to make it bigger.”
When Mr. Payton transferred to Roanoke Avenue in 2010, the tradition came with him. Over the years, he’s faced off in a lip sync battle with a fourth-grade teacher, been bombarded with water balloons and been duct-taped to a wall. Last year, he was happy to be slathered head to toe in Silly String. This year, he circled back to the head-shave — this time with a twist.
“I had [barber] Rashad [Goff] shave the word ‘READ’ into my head,” Mr. Payton said proudly.
This year, Roanoke Avenue students didn’t just meet their goal, they obliterated it. School officials confirmed that students logged a staggering 127,000 minutes — an average of about five and a half hours of reading per child. While, there were carve-outs for the youngest students — those who can’t yet read could be read to — Mr. Payton said parents signed off on their children’s reading logs every night.
“It’s a legit log,” Mr. Payton emphasized. “Parents sign off on it. These kids did their reading.”
The effort was bolstered by creative evening events, including a Tuesday night “Curl Up with a Good Book” session with milk and cookies, where parents and students read together. Wednesday featured the school’s first-ever family game night, designed to get kids off screens and engaged in interactive activities — many of which, of course, involved books.
By Friday, anticipation had reached fever pitch. The entire student body packed into the auditorium, their chants of “Shave your head! Shave your head!” rivaling the energy of a championship game. Teachers egged on the crowd from the aisles. Sections of students clumsily attempted “the wave.” It was a scene of pure, boisterous joy.
Members Worldwide — a videography team of college students, including videographers Curtis and Daytwon Spruill and photographer Jahquel Blount — captured the excitement in a video shared with Riverhead News-Review readers.
Third-grade teacher Christine Santos’ class logged the most reading minutes schoolwide — more than 13,000.
“I tried to base everything this week off of reading,” she said, “whether it was working in groups, reading an article and then working together. I had them read their math questions, and they did a math quiz during reading. I had them do funny reading as a period, and then they worked themselves on independent reading with books and Scholastic News stories.”
Mr. Payton said each September, the first question on students’ minds is what he’s going to do for reading week.
“If I can put a little incentive in to pump them up, I’m certainly going to do that,” he said, adding that last week, the excitement in the air was palpable.
“You see kids coming back from lunch, they’re walking by our office, waving and making motions like they’re pretending to shave my head,” the principal said. “They’re just having a ball with it.”
In 20 years of reading week challenges, Mr. Payton noted, his kids have “never missed their mark.”
“I think I’m going to have to go over 100,000 minutes, because the last few years they’ve hit 120,000, 130,000, 150,000.”
Ms. Santos said it’s not just the kids who are competing.
“It’s a great tradition — super exciting — and it’s always great to have them work towards something,: she explained. “But, secretly, we all like to compete at the grade levels and Ms. [Donna] Verbeck is our veteran teacher and I always try my hardest to see if I can beat her, and I finally beat her this year.”
