The Mobile Register has a nice letter this morning with an uplifting letter carrying a story we knew all along.
If you live on Dauphin Island, or if you vacation there or visit Dauphin Island from time to time you already know the people there are generally good to the core - genuine, honest, straightforward, hard-working. Let's not forget to mention sharp as a tack. And their kids... let's just say the apples aren't falling far from the trees on Dauphin Island.
The good news from Dauphin Island
I will not let this matter go unspoken, unwritten or unnoticed. Mobile needs to hear some positive things occurring every day in our schools.
I am a teacher at Dauphin Island Elementary School. Our students and their families lost so much due to the effect of Hurricane Katrina. Some lost homes; others lost businesses, jobs and even the bikes they rode to school.
Before the hurricane, I had 17 students enrolled in my class. After the storm, only 14 returned. Three families lost everything and left the island.
Recently, we were told that the United Way was beginning its campaign in the schools, asking for monetary donations. How could these students give, when they had lost so much?
We talked to the students about helping others, for we had been helped in so many ways. The next day, the students began giving their snack money and change from their coin banks. Students began asking parents and local businesses to donate. The excitement grew and overflowed.
I would like to report that the 14 second-grade students raised more than $100 in less than a week for the United Way. We do know the true meaning of the phase, "It is better to give than to receive."
I would also like to share with Mobile that our fifth-grade students last year scored 100 percent on the State Mandated Writing Assessment. This score was not only the highest in Mobile but the highest in the state. I do not think this accomplishment was ever published.
The same 14 second-graders have qualified as a National Reading Renaissance Model Classroom. Model Classroom certification indicates that Reading Renaissance/Accelerated Reader methods have resulted in measurable increases in student reading performance.
Through this technology reading program, students read on their own personal levels to achieve goals set at the beginning of a 12-week period.
They have read more than 350 books in 53 days and have taken comprehension quizzes and have maintained a 91 percent reading average.
We believe at Dauphin Island School that all students can learn, whatever it takes. This Reading Renaissance Program is one of the methods we use to help students read and comprehend what they read.
These second-graders are not "learning to read." They are "reading to learn," and are caring and giving individuals. These combinations create great citizens and proficient workers for Mobile's future.
CAMILLE H. McGUIRE
Dauphin Island Elementary School
Dauphin Island
Local resident Rob Nykvist keeps a photo journal of his kayaking excursions in the Mobile-Tensaw River Delta, inlcuding Mobile Bay, and the Barrier Islands
Today National Public Radio's Noaa Adams visits Dauphin Island where he talks to fishermen and local residents struggling to rebuild the economy on and around Dauphin Island. This is part two of his series as he travels the Intercoastal Waterway from Florida to New Orleans.
Ecologist Bob Paine will deliver the 12th installment of the annual Wiese lecture series this Wednesday evening 7pm at University of South Alabama's Mitchell Center.
For your Friday morning reading enjoyment:
Following the destruction from hurricanes Katrina and Rita, Fort Loudon resident Marcia Hartle wanted to do something to help.
So she went to organizations and businesses — from the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Chambersburg to Zody's Moving and Storage in Waynesboro — to raise $2,000 and 6,000 pounds in donations of dog and cat food in a little more than six weeks.
Why dogs and cats?
"Because I'm an animal lover," she said, explaining that she noticed a lack of coverage about Bayou Labartre in Alabama, a place she usually visits when she and her husband vacation at Dauphin Island, Ala.Overall, Hartle said the five-day trip from Oct. 14 to 18 left her in surprisingly good spirits, as she and her neighbor Jean Sowers visited Gulf Port, Biloxi and Vancleave, Miss., as well as Dauphin Island and Mobile, Ala.
"It was devastating to see all the destruction, but everyone down there has such a positive attitude," she said. "These people who have been washed out just kept on going."
People even handed her money when she was shopping for dog collars and other pet supplies for animal shelters, Hartle said.
And with a banner on the side of her vehicle that read: "Hurricane Katrina and Rita Pet Relief and Rescue," some people donated money after they saw her driving around.
Funny enough, Hartle said she and her husband do not own any pets because they travel so much for work.
Nevertheless, when she is home, she gets unannounced visitors from next door.
"Our neighbor's dogs come by to visit us every night," she said.
Isn't this typical? Doesn't it just "fit" in with the people and culture you meet on Dauphin Island?