Seniors connect to elementary schoolers in annual ‘Toga reads’

October 30, 2018 — by Jun Lee and Nitya Marimuthu

"Toga Reads" allows seniors to interact with elementary school students in skits about bullying.

Senior Cameron Lin felt the hundreds of young eyes on her as she played foursquare for the first time since elementary school. When fellow senior Roshan Verma tried to join the game, Cameron and three other seniors in the skit proceeded to mock him.

Verma then demonstrated to the onlooking audience how to deter bullying as he showed them not to “hook” on to the mean things that he heard and instead laugh it off.

Teaching elementary students lessons like the ones shown in this skit was the main goal as several seniors read books out loud and performed skits for elementary schoolers in “Toga Reads,” an annual event organized by the senior Leadership class. Seniors read at Argonaut and Saratoga Elementary on Oct. 19 and Foothill Elementary on Oct. 29.

This event has occurred every year since Leadership started, with the exception of last year, since Leadership was unable to schedule a time with the elementary schools.

Seniors read aloud books such as “Simon’s Hook: A Story about Teases and Put-downs” by Karen Gedig Burnett. The book compares teases to fishing hooks, aiming to teach students the choices they have in response to bullying. Senior Nevin Prasad said that the themes that the books convey — such as inclusion and kindness — can “mean a lot coming from high school students to younger kids.”

The purpose of the skit was to show kids a visual representation of its content.

Senior class vice president Hanlin Sun participated in the skit at Argonaut, portraying one of the antagonists in the book who was being mean to other characters. Sun said he enjoyed seeing how the elementary schoolers reacted to the presentation. “It’s just funny to get the reactions from the kids, and it’s just really fun to you see where you came from,” Sun said. “Like looking at them and you remember those days in elementary school.”

Sun also said that Toga Reads is a great way for participants to “interact with the next generation” of students.

Leadership read to individual classes at Saratoga Elementary and Foothill, and they omitted the skit due to the small setting. At Argonaut, students read and performed a skit in a school-wide assembly.

Any senior could be involved, whether they were in Leadership or not. Leadership chose seven students that were energetic readers in order to keep the elementary schoolers engaged. Prasad said that the combination of enthusiastic readers and the skit helped keep the children captivated.

“The kids have short attention spans so we have got to keep them engaged, so that’s why you split it up into the skit and the reading,” Prasad said.

Sun said that the kids overall had a very positive experience with the high schoolers and the reading went as well as they hoped. The seniors were able to convey the book’s message well to the elementary schoolers.

“They definitely got what we were trying to say,” Sun said. “After we finished the skit and we asked them what they got from our skit, they all said the right messages that we were hoping to transmit.”

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