Thursday, November 06, 2008
USI student awarded books for student teaching
 A USI student will have new resources to encourage leisure reading when she begins student teaching in January at Oak Hill Middle School in Evansville.Aafke Bleecker, an English teaching major from Lanesville, Indiana, is the recipient of the Indiana Middle Grades Reading Network Award. She has received 50 books to use in the classroom during student teaching. A self-avowed bookworm, Bleecker said the books offer an assortment of topics — from historical fiction to sports to biographies — that will appeal to students in middle school. “If you want to encourage voluntary reading,” she said, “you have to show students that the books apply to their lives.” Bleecker said Ann Franke’s The Diary of a Young Girl and To Kill a Mockingbird were significant books to her as she was growing up. They dealt with race and discrimination through characters she could understand. Many books that Bleecker received in the collection are winners of the Young Hoosier Book Award. These awards are presented each year by the Indiana Library Federation to the picture book, intermediate book, and middle grade book receiving the most votes from the students of Indiana. Bleecker is the daughter of Mark and Edith Bleecker of Lanesville. A graduate of Lanesville Junior-Senior High School, she was a teacher’s aide and tutor in high school. She decided on a career in teaching after realizing that she is happiest when helping others — and that is usually when she is teaching. She said her grandfather Seijo Kruizinga, a Dutch immigrant, encouraged her educational aspirations and love of reading. “He was adamant that his family would speak English, and education was important to him,” she said. Kruizinga, who came to the United States following World War II, lived in New Albany, Indiana. He died in 2007. When she completes her student teaching, Bleecker will leave 25 books for the Oak Hill classroom and take the other 25 for use when she becomes a teacher. Funded by the Lilly Endowment, Inc., the Middle Grades Reading Network is an organization dedicated to the promotion of voluntary reading of books, newspapers, and other print materials among young adolescents. Bleecker is on target to graduate in spring 2009. She is president of the USI chapter of Sigma Tau Delta, the international English honor society. She is a member of the Honors Program and a student worker in the College of Liberal Arts. Bleecker holds the Homer L. and Olive Carruthers Clifft Presidential Scholarship established by Olive Carruthers Clifft, who taught social studies at Ben Davis High School in Indianapolis for more than 41 years. Kathy Funke News & Information Services kfunke@usi.edu or 812/465-7050 |
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