What would you do if your school received thousands of dollars to go toward helping improve the state of your reading material?
Ask those at Harry Camsell School and Princess Alexandra School in Hay River and they'll tell you the sky's the limit.
Both schools were announced as recipients of grant money from the Indigo Love of Reading Foundation earlier this month. Each was awarded $20,000 and they were the only schools in the NWT that received such funding.
Coral Helmer, who's an instructional coach at both schools, said they had known a couple of weeks beforehand about the money, but had to keep things quiet until things were made official.
"We have applied for years to get funding and we're so excited to finally get it," she said. "Our students are going to be very excited to see some new material."
The funding is designed to go toward increasing library budgets and buy new books and supplies, but Tara Boudreau, the principal for both schools, said she has some ideas on how the funding could help.
"We could have author visits, we could have libraries in classrooms, events for families involving literacy," she said. "We don't have a breakdown yet of where the funding will go, but we do have some ideas."
Boudreau said one way this funding will help is so teachers don't have to dip into their own wallets.
"A lot of our teachers spend their own money to buy books or reading supplies for their classrooms," she said. "This is something that's really positive and will be a big benefit for the community as a whole."
One thing Helmer said will be fun is restocking the library at each school with brand new material, which always excites students.
"Kids still like picking up a physical book and reading them," she said. "Sometimes books go missing or they go out of date or they become damaged for whatever reason, so being able to put new books on the shelves with new graphics will be a lot of fun and I know the kids at both schools will love seeing the new material."
