GRANDVILLE, Mich. — Good leaders celebrate achievements—and there’s no better leader than a passionate educator.
This Tuesday Principal Mike Gelmi of Grandville’s Central Elementary school will shout his appreciation and pride in his students from the roof-tops—literally.
“It'll be fine," Gelmi told us about his upcoming adventure. "Like I said, I'll have a tent, so I'll be fine.”
The school created a March Madness-themed reading challenge. Each student tracking their progress on in a slip of paper each time they did five 20-minute reading sessions.
Brackets were made and students started meeting goal after goal on their way to getting 1,000 hours of reading under their belts.
“If we reached 500. I dressed up like a basketball hoop and they got to shoot and dunk baskets on me the day before break,” Principal Mike Gelmi told FOX 17. “Then we had another goal and if they reach that goal, we had a donut party. So, we had a Dunkin donut party where we had with our kiddos.”
The aim was 600 slips—
Students surpassed by 132.5%— handing in *795 slips for a total of 1,325 hours.
And now principal Gelmi has a climb to make.
We could feel his pride in his students when he talked about how hard each kid worked.
“It's actually really powerful and really awesome. The amount of time and effort and passion our kids put into reading during that time. how excited they were for reading extremely proud,” Gelmi bragged.
Nice work central Elementary. You guys are awesome. I appreciate everything they do every day.
—Principal Mike Gelmi, Grandville Public Schools Central Elementary
Principal Gelmi is looking forward to connecting with the students while up on the roof—setting up Google meets with classrooms and a bucket that will be tied to a string to pass notes back and forth—we’ve even heard he might do a story-time reading.
Gelmi will head to the roof at 7:45 Tuesday morning.
We’ll be there talking to him about how to avoid summer slide, and catch up with students, staff, and parents as they come to school about what this celebration of their achievements means to them.
