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06/19/2024 08:30 AMEverybody knows about summer reading. It is generally what students start, and sometimes finish, the week before school starts.
Essex resident Joan Falcigno has a different take on this classic summer activity. She is part of the leadership team, along with Barbara Haines and Barbara Turley, of the River Valley Fund for Families at the Community Foundation of Middlesex County, which has put together literacy kits for young students to use all summer.
The kits are designed for students from kindergarten to 4th and 5th grade. They will be going to selected students in Essex, Deep River, Old Saybrook, Clinton, and Westbrook.
Joan contacted the reading coordinators of local schools and worked with those who replied. From them, she learned the ages of students who would receive the kits, as well as special circumstances, such as non-native speakers of English. The schools, however, did not release the names of the young recipients.
The kits have books, to be sure, as well as pencils and erasers, but they also have materials for a variety of summer pastimes like crayons, glue sticks, sketch pads, workbooks, and even scissors. Small children, Joan explains, can sometimes have problems using scissors.
“You don’t realize how hard it is for a 5-year-old to use scissors,” she says. “That takes a lot of eye-hand coordination.”
Joan points out that some of the young children who will receive the kits are currently living in situations in which finding things to do can be a challenge.
“Some of them live in motels,” she says.
Contributors to the River Valley Fund for Families donated the money for the materials in the kits. In addition, members of the group took cards with the school’s information and purchased appropriate books and other materials for each of the 100 bags.
“One woman took 24 cards,” Joan says.
When the project started, Joan thought that making up for learning loss during COVID would be what the literacy kits addressed. She was surprised to learn that for many of the students who were not native speakers of English, mastering the language was a far greater issue.
As a result, the literacy kits include bilingual flash cards and children’s standards like The Cat in the Hat and Little Red Riding Hood in both in English and a second language, usually Spanish or Portuguese. The material, Joan points out, could also be useful for parents who are not native English speakers.
Now retired, Joan spent her career of some 30 years as a school psychologist in North Haven, working with elementary school students.
Growing up in Worcester, Massachusetts, Joan knew early on that was the work she wanted to do. She thinks the original impetus was seeing how a neurodiverse young boy in her neighborhood was treated.
Joan certainly learned a lot about group dynamics in her own home. She was one of 12 children, the third oldest.
“The older siblings helped to take care of the younger siblings. I think it helped developed our independence at early ages,” she recalls.
During high school, for her required community service, Joan worked at a school for neurodiverse youngsters. She knew when she went to the University of St. Joseph that a career as a school psychologist was what she wanted.
According to Joan, while the problems which face young students have some commonality over the decades, the causes change. She notes that electronic media, screens as she calls them, which were unknown at the start of her career, are now among the issues which now cause turmoil for students.
Joan retired two years ago, A foot condition that required an operation was a precipitating cause. While her foot was healing, Joan crocheted, something she has done for many years.
“Afghans, blankets,” she says.
Joan is also a skilled seamstress. She made clothes, even coats, for her four children, now grown. She and her husband Vincent have eight grandchildren.
She also sewed with children at school, doing quilting for the Linus Project, which is named for the character in The Peanuts whose blanket is his trademark. The organization provides handmade blankets for sick children or children in need. The project for her students was about more than quilting.
“It was about self-confidence and kindness,” she says.
Though now retired, Joan is not done with teaching. She has volunteered for a state program which provides emotionally and intellectually challenged children in foster care with what is called a surrogate parent, someone familiar with the education system, to advocate for them and make sure they are receiving appropriate services.
“Since I have been a school psychologist, I know what is out there,” she explains.
At the time Joan spoke with a reporter, all 100 literacy kits in bright yellow nylon bags were in big plastic baskets in Joan’s family room. Several days later, after the kits had been distributed, one of the reading consultants emailed Joan to say that “the joy on the kids’ faces is incredible.”
Joan would like the literacy kits to be more than a one-time project.
“I hope we can do them at Christmas next year,” she says