MONTCLAIR, NJ — The following news release comes courtesy of the Montclair Foundation. Learn more about posting announcements or events to your local Patch site.
The Montclair Rotary Club has helped a generation of elementary school students in Montclair and Verona get a jump start in building their vocabulary. Over the past 18 years the club has donated more than 15,500 student dictionaries to third-grade students in both communities. The first groups of students to receive their dictionaries have graduated from high school and finished college.
Montclair Rotarian Georgia Brown brought The Dictionary Project to the two communities in 2004 and has coordinated the effort the entire time. Annually, Ms. Brown and volunteers from the club distribute student dictionaries to pupils at 15 private, parochial, and public elementary schools in Montclair and Verona. This winter and spring, Ms. Brown and the club's team delivered a total of 1,401 dictionaries to third and fourth graders in both communities.
Students from the following schools received dictionaries this year:
- Montclair: Bradford Elementary School, Charles H. Bullock School, Edgemont Montessori Elementary School, Hillside Elementary School, Lacordaire Academy, Montclair Cooperative School, Northeast Elementary School, St. Cassian Elementary School, Watchung Elementary School
- Verona: Brookdale Avenue School, Forest Avenue School, Laning Avenue School, Our Lady of the Lake School, Spectrum360 School, F.N. Brown School
Ms. Brown's enthusiasm for the project earned her the nickname "Dictionary Peach," a reference to her home state of Georgia.
The Montclair Rotary Foundation, which is a nonprofit, has funded the purchase of dictionaries along with contributions by individuals. The Foundation also supplies financial grants to hunger relief efforts, affordable housing initiatives, and international youth exchange programs. The Montclair Rotary Club is celebrating 100 years of serving the local community during 2022.
Pandemic Disrupts Dictionary Distribution
Typically, the Rotary club gives dictionaries to third graders. But when the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted that schedule during 2020 and 2021, Ms. Brown decided to expand the project this year to include fourth grade classes in the dictionary distribution.
Longest Word in the English Language
The soft-bound books have more than 370 pages of words and definitions plus maps, biographies of U.S. presidents and information about America's states and nations of the world. In the past, Ms. Brown brought dictionaries to each classroom and encouraged to lookup a word each day. She showed students that the dictionaries included the longest word in the English language, which has more than 1900 letters.
Ms. Brown said, "I was a natural choice to chair The Dictionary Project committee because I have always loved words. And I am a curious person and good dictionaries have thousands of words plus an abundance of useful information."
The late Robert Pityo, a longtime member of the Cedar Grove Rotary Club, mentored Ms. Brown in the dictionary project. Brown embraced the project because she believes that learning is a lifetime habit. Dictionaries, she added, are tools people can always use.
During a recent dictionary delivery to Verona's Lanning Avenue School, Principal Howard Freund said, "I am grateful for the opportunity to give our third and fourth graders their own dictionaries. They hold the dictionary in their hands and flip through pages filled with thousands of words. Students get to discover different words and find out what they mean."
Marking the End of an Era
Ms. Brown, who is retired from the U.S. Postal Service's office in Montclair, is completing her last year as chairperson of the annual dictionary project. She said, "I have many wonderful memories meeting and speaking with students at each of the local schools. When I hand the dictionary to students, I often see a sparkle of gratitude in their eyes and that makes all the effort worthwhile."
The Rotary Club is marking its 100 Anniversary year in 2022. The club that serves the communities of Montclair and Verona by supporting not-for-profit organizations, schools, and community groups. Rotarians volunteer their time and contribute resources to aid local hunger-relief and food insecurity programs, affordable housing efforts, the local animal shelter, and programs for veterans and the elderly. Members also sponsor community service projects. For more information about the Rotary, which meets each Tuesday at 12:15 p.m., contact Club President Paul Metcalfe at montclairrotaryclub@gmail.com. The club currently alternates between virtual meetings and in-person sessions held at the Greek Taverna Restaurant in Montclair.
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