Q&A with
JASON
CRADER
Meet Jason Crader! A native of Little Rock, Arkansas, EAST facilitator at Carver Magnet Elementary School and one of four individuals selected as Little Rock Family’s 2020 Amazing Educator! We sat down with Jason and learned that he is a graduate of Arkansas State University, he recently ran his 16th marathon, and when he stepped into the role of facilitator, his first thought was “I don’t think I can do this!” With a quote he lives by guiding him, ’All of our dreams can come true if we have the courage to pursue them’ stated by Walt Disney, he has no doubt succeeded!
Q
What was the mose memorable project/ moment in EAST you'd like to share
A: A project we worked on last year was the
Book Bracket Battle (www.bookbracketbattle. com). The students working on this project wanted to help improve the love of reading at our school. They had noticed that both students and teachers weren’t reading much, so they wanted to do something about it. They contacted local celebrities to partner with them in filming ’read alouds’ at our school. They recorded and edited 16 different stories that were shown to students over the course of three months in a tournament-style game. Two books/readers battled each other weekly, and students voted for their favorite books. At the end of the competition, students selected an overall book to be the Book Bracket Battle Champion. The kids working on this project learned many technical things in regards to shooting videos and editing them, but they also saw growth in reading at school. They calculated a 112% improvement in students reaching their Accelerated Reader Goals after the project was implemented. The students who created this project are in middle school now. I heard from one student recently that she used her audio and editing skills she learned while doing this project to help with a summer theater production.
Did you know Little Rock Family is a magazine that was started to help busy parents be more successful at work and home by providing a resource for family news and kid-friendly activities?
