The Franklin Reporter & Advocate Eight Villages, One Community
Teachers and administrators at a local charter school are betting their students are willing to trade snacks for books.
Students and staff at Thomas Edison EnergySmart Charter School on Pierce Street unveiled their newest acquisition on May 28, a vending machine for books.
“Inchy’s Bookworm Vending Machine,” as it is called, works exactly as do traditional machines that vend snacks and soft drinks; a coin is deposited, a code is entered and a book is dispensed. In “Inchy’s” case, the book is accompanied by a voice saying, “One book, coming right up!”
As the book is being retrieved, the voice says, “Enjoy your book. Keep up the good work.”
The machine’s presence in the school is thanks to Elisha Hendelson, who teaches 4th Grade reading, writing and social studies.
“I have a friend that works in another school, and she had showed it to me maybe last year,” she said. “We kind of talked about it, and I loved the idea.”
Hendelson said she brought the idea to Rajasri Govindaraju, the school’s K-6 curriculum supervisor.
“Mrs. Govindaraju was great with supporting it and everything,” she said.
Money had to be raised to buy the $5,000 machine and to purchase the books, and that was accomplished through the PTO and individual parents, Govindaraju said.
Hendelson said she was “excited” to see the machine operating in the school.
“I’m excited because I saw it, and I thought it was a great idea, and I’m excited to see it play out, especially next year when we start the year fresh,” she said.
Govindaraju said she saw the machine as a way to stimulate students’ interest in reading, and boost reading comprehension, which took a hit during the Covid-19 pandemic and shutdown.
“We are hoping that we get to see more students reading and see a rise in their reading levels,” she said. “We want very good readers, and especially in elementary, we believe that good readers make good writers, hence we want to promote reading.”
The machine does not accept cash, rather, students use tokens to purchase their selections.
Those tokens will be earned in a myriad of ways, Govindaraju said.
“Every teacher will come up with her own way, like if her challenges in the class are behaviors, she would come up with a way how they would earn that token for making good choices or making the right behavior, choosing to behave in the right way,” she said. “Or it could also be to promote reading goals, when students reach their reading goal, that’s when they can earn a book.”
Students said they liked the machine.
Latif Tabanli, a Junior, said the importance of having the machine in the school is “that it just gives people an opportunity to just get access to books more, and also to make it more appealing to be getting it out of a vending machine than out of, you know, a bookshelf.”
“And it’s just great that we have this opportunity to make it much easier and enable students in our school to read more,” he said.
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