Central Point teacher raising money for e-readers

CENTRAL POINT, Ore. – A Central Point middle school teacher is asking for the community’s help, so her students can have access to books this year. Tracey Coffman, or Ms. Coffman, teaches students that are learning English as their second language.

Reading, she says, is extremely important to increase their language skills. More than half of her students come from low income areas and don’t have access to new books. Many of these students used to rely on their school library. When schools went virtual in March, many of her students lost that access. To help her students, she started an online fundraiser to raise money to buy Amazon Kindles.

When schools initially shut down in the spring, Ms. Coffman said she drove to her students homes with books so they could still read. She said one of her students would race through the books her teacher gave her and would have to wait until another delivery. This inspired the idea of Kindles for her students.

“I need to see if I can get these funds and get some Kindle readers for my kids, so that they are able to access books whenever they finish one! Then they can go on to the next,” says Ms. Coffman. She says with the Libby app, students would be able to choose from over 35,000 books from the public library.

Ms. Coffman is trying to fundraise money for 35 Kindles, that she would be able to use with her students on a yearly basis. The total amount needed is around $2,200 and a few people have donated so far. If you are interested in donating, you can view the fundraiser here. She is hoping to raise the funds by the end of October.