Principal-for-a-Day: Kaiser Permanente promotes reading

He didn’t expel any students, and he didn’t order any young mischief-makers to stay after school, but Kaiser Permanente’s Stephan Wahl did spend his time being “Principal-for-a-Day” encouraging young people to read, read, read at the Taft School in Redwood City, California.
Wahl, who is the Kaiser Permanente Community Benefit Manager for San Mateo County, California, signed up for county-wide principal program, as part of his role providing Kaiser Permanente’s philanthropy to non-profit community health and wellness organizations .
“I love reading to children in their classrooms,” says Wahl, explaining why he volunteered as “Principal-for-a-Day”, “and a big part of my job is forging partnerships between Kaiser Permanente grantees and other organizations, like the schools in San Mateo County.”
So Wahl spent his day shadowing Principal Robyn Miller, visiting classrooms and distributing dozens and dozens of new beginning reader books to first and second grade children, many of whom speak English as a second-language.
“I was just so excited when I heard that Kaiser Permanente wanted to help us,” said Principal Miller. “Taft School has a lot of needs: 100% of our children qualify for free lunch, 12% are special ed students……”
Taft is considered a “high need” school, serving one of the not-very-wealthy communities in prosperous San Mateo County . Kaiser Permanente often provides grants to groups that can partner with the schools: for example, a grantee The Police Activity League is next door to Taft, and they provide exercise programs for Taft students.
“Kaiser Permanente staff volunteers did a fix-up program at Taft for the Dr. Martin Luther King Day of Service,” says Wahl, “and we’ve brought our amazing Educational Theater here also.”
The theater, consisting of specially-trained health educators who are also performers, put on musical shows aimed at kids and talk about healthy eating, self-respect, and bullying-avoidance. Kaiser Permanente’s Educational Theater is the only one of its kind in the nation.
“We’re a community school, not only for the children but their families as well,” says Principal Miller, “so Kaiser Permanente’s help with these issues is very important.”
Wahl and Miller walked from classroom to classroom at Taft, carrying shopping bags of new reading books. Wahl handed them out to the children, who excitedly grabbed them up. In English and Spanish, the first-and-second-graders were grateful.
“It’s important they start loving to read now,” says Wahl, “because by 3rd grade they must read to learn.”
On this trip, Wahl learned that principals, even “Principals-for-a-Day” are very busy, talking to teachers and meeting people, so he didn’t have time to read to any of the classes. But he recounted one of his experiences, choosing Eric Carle’s “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” to read to a group of young children.
“I started reading the book, and noticed they were all “reading” along with me: they knew every single line!”