Last week, representatives from the Fremont County Library System hosted team members from McDonald’s at the Lander Branch Library. The goal? To improve youth reading skills by expanding reading programs across the county.
“I didn’t realize what was going on, but in Fourth Grade I was put in a remedial reading program. I couldn’t read,” shared Tim Postel owner of the Fremont County McDonald’s restaurants. “A Sixth Grade kid was my tutor and by the time I was in Sixth, I was tutoring too. It was a changing moment in my life and I would have been lost without that help. Helping kids learn to read is something I’m really passionate about.”
Postel also owns the Casper, Douglas and Glenrock McDonald’s stores. He told the Library System staff that he has been supporting reading programs from those stores for the last four years. In 2017, he said those locations gave away 10,000 Happy Meals as reading incentives for a program where kids read well over 500,000 minutes over the summer.
With the Boys & Girls Club in Casper, McDonald’s piloted a reading program that has exploded. An end of summer party was thrown last year for just the top 10% of readers in that program. It took four busses to get all the readers to the party!
Janette McMahon, the Executive Director for the Fremont County Library System invited the Branch Managers from the libraries in Riverton, Lander and Dubois to share details about their branch successes.
McMahon said that “Fremont County has a number of challenges including an extremely low literacy rate and distance to access services. There are families that must travel over an hour and half to get to a library. We also have such a diverse population that one shoe simply can’t fit all our branch locations.”
McMahon shared that Fremont County Libraries is ready to launch a new statewide after-school program called Grade Level Reading. The program partners with local schools to address the “backslide” in reading level that many students have over the summer.
The Library System is also working on a Mobile Creative Lab. The lab would combine fun, hands-on activities and experiments with a literacy component. Fremont County will likely begin seeing this “maker-space on wheels” at local events where families gather for activities, such as Day in the Park in Riverton.
“I am so impressed by all these outreach programs,” commented Postel. “There is so much caring and passion in the library system. This is a no brainer. We definitely want to help out.”
Postel and his team from the local McDonald’s stores are looking for ways they can plug in and duplicate the successes they’ve helped bring about in Casper.
