The Gift of Knowledge

This holiday season, every Spring Branch ISD third-grade student received “the gift of knowledge” thanks to The Dictionary Project, a program sponsored by the district’s Community Relations department.

Ten years ago, Housman Elementary School volunteer Ormonde Smith spotted a Wall Street Journal article about the Dictionary Project, an effort to promote language arts skills among the young by giving them a main tool for reading, spelling and oral pronunciation. What began as a gift of a single dictionary from a mentor to his student, The Dictionary Project continues to be an annual district-wide initiative.

Thanks to the generosity of community members and organizations, more than 2,500 third-graders took home their dictionaries this year along with supporting lessons about spelling, reading and proper word use.

Sponsors of the program this year include United Way of Greater Houston, the Village Republican Women, Larry and Patricia McDowell, Doug and Pam Goodson, Joni Baird, Mary Sherwood, the Spring Branch Lions Club, Katherine Dawson, Chris Gonzalez, Barbara Potts, Germaine Champion, Kids Hope Mentors at Our Lady of Walsingham Catholic Church, Theresa Kosmoski, and Daniel Measurement & Control. Additionally, a grant from the Houston CPA Society was used for a second year to support a number of the district’s Title I campuses.

“Thanks to the continued generosity of our community members who believe in our students, our schools and this wonderful program, this year we distributed more than 2,500 dictionaries,” program coordinator Abby Walker says. “Providing this gift of knowledge is a powerful way to ensure we are instilling a love of learning in our students for years to come.”

Supporting the Dictionary Project is just one of the ways community members participate in SBISD’s Good Neighbor program. To learn more about the Dictionary Project or the Good Neighbor program, please contact Abby Walker at 713.251.2289 or visit our website: www.springbranchisd.com/goodneighbor.