Central Park Middle School - NASA Explorer School

On October 23, 2005, Central Park Middle School librarian, Rita Moore traveled to Tula, Russia to participate in a Russian reading seminar, "The Reading Child in a Modern World." The Albany-Tula Alliance, a Albany-based, non-profit organization, invited Moore to take the trip and participate in the program - which focused on getting students to read. She will returned to Schenectady on October 30 with plenty of stories and photos.

The Albany-Tula Alliance helped organize the seminar with Tula officials and covered the travel expenses for Moore as well as Tamarac Middle/High School librarian, Mary Emerson. The two librarians stayed with Russian families while there. While in Russia, Moore also visited Moscow and the home of author Leo Tolstoy.

The seminar was held at two libraries in Tula and featured presentations from Tolstoi Central State Library, the Tula Library System, the Tula Education Department and the Russian State Children's
Museum.

Moore presented the Schenectady School District's recent reading campaign, Schenectady Reads. The promotional campaign features a series of short messages taped by the the high school's television station personnel and featuring Capital Region parents, politicians, community leaders and celebrities stressing the importance of reading to parents. The spots, featuring filmmaker and Schenectady alumnus John Sayles, Lt. Gov. Mary Donohue and Schenectady Mayor Brian Stratton, were taped over the summer and air on SCS TV (Time Warner Cable Channel 17), the district's educational TV station.

Moore showed several of the spots during her seminar segment which also included an overview of Central Park's reading program and a PowerPoint presentation featuring Central Park students talking about books they've read and inviting Russian students to share what they read in school and at home.

Other seminar topics included "Children, Computers and the Internet: Reading Problems and Computer Literacy Through the Eyes of the School and the Library," "What and How do American Children Read," and "Against Negative Tendencies - All Together."

The Alliance is making plans to invite Tula librarians and educators to Albany in the Spring to participate in another reading conference. The organization is dedicated to forging strong social, educational and cultural ties with Tula, which was designated as Albany's sister city in 1991.