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St. Mary’s School hosts published author

Students from St. Mary’s School and Sacred Heart School/Ecole Sacre Coeur listened to author and publisher Stephen Kozan on Thursday, as he stopped by the schools to teach kids about literacy and get them excited about story telling.
Stephen Kozan
Author and publisher Stephen Kozan spoke at St. Mary’s School last week.

Students from St. Mary’s School and Sacred Heart School/Ecole Sacre Coeur listened to author and publisher Stephen Kozan on Thursday, as he stopped by the schools to teach kids about literacy and get them excited about story telling. 

Kozan who is from Pennsylvania, brought illustrator Lindsay Arnold from North Portal to help in his educational program that he provided to the children. 

Christa Walton, who is a teacher at Sacred Heart got in touch with Stephen Kozan about providing some educational programming. Kozan couldn’t travel so far for just one school, and thanks to a team effort, he visited several other schools in the southeast before leaving. 

“When he visited our school he asked the kids who attended his event if they would write themselves a story just using one page,” said Coline Smetaniuk, a teacher at St. Mary’s. 

“He would then look at each story that the kids wrote and he would make changes to help them learn literacy, but he got the kids really excited because with the stories that the kids write, one of them may end up becoming an actual book.”

Smetaniuk noted that kids can get bored just looking at text all day, so having someone come in and show a connection between writing and creating pictures really helped in keeping the youths engaged with what they were being shown.

“We had about three groups of kids rotating through the program that day and each of the group got really involved. We had a few students that were writing and creating pictures to go along with their story,” she said. 

“Stephen normally brings an illustrator with him and he will spend about 30 minutes with the kids and Lindsay will spend about 30 minutes showing them how to illustrate,” she added. 

One of the interesting parts of the event, according to Smetaniuk, was Kozan showed the kids how the interpretation of a story or a picture can be completely different by just changing a few words or a few attributes of the story. 

Overall the event at the St. Mary’s went really well with teacher enjoying seeing their students getting excited about reading, creating and storytelling, as well as literacy in general. 

“I think the best part of having Stephen visit our school is the importance of showing kids what they can do themselves,” she said.