US travel agent to spread the word about joyous experience at Read Across Jamaica

MONTEGO BAY, St James — Recognising the joy she felt while interacting with students during Read Across Jamaica Day on Tuesday, one travel agent has said she will be going back to the United States and encouraging her colleagues to partake in the exercise next time around.

Carol Beth Scott was part of a group of 40 travel agents who travelled to Salt Spring Primary and Infant School to participate in the activity through the effort of Sandals Resorts and the Sandals Foundation.

“I was exposed to it for the first time last year and have shared the joy of it with many people,” said Scott following a reading session at the institution.

“However, I don’t think we have done a good job of letting everyone else know, so, we’re going to move forward and make sure more people know about it,” added Scott after she shared the day with a group which travelled to the school where they spent time with students from the infant level to grade six.

“Every time Sandals brings us and we get to do one of these experiences, we want to do more and more of it because we see the impact on the kids.

“I think any time we choose to spend time with children, purposely and intentionally, and show that they are loved, wanted and beautiful, it is always purposeful,” declared Scott.

Her son, Joshua Scott, was joining her for the first time and declared that he was blown away by the experience with the children, reading with them and just interacting with them.

“The reception from the students were fantastic, they were very, very excited, very enthusiastic. They wanted me to read and also wanted to read to me. They wanted to ask me lots of questions, answer all my questions,” said Jason.

“I had several visitors from other tables come up and say ‘hi’ or just give me hugs, or just wanted to get my input on what they were doing, or just share their life with me, and I was just excited to share the same space,” added Scott.

This was the first time that the Sandals Foundation has brought travel agents to partake in the National Read Across Jamaica Day activities.

They were part of a larger group of 200 who are in the island to celebrate Global Travel Advisor Day on May 7, and decided that they wanted to participate in the activity according to operations director at Sandals Foundation, Karen Zacca.

“They had asked us to take them to schools and to read with children because they also love the experience of leaving the hotels and coming out in the communities and helping children to read,” said Zacca.

“The Sandals Foundation has an experience called the Reading Road Trip where every week on a Thursday, we take our guests to read in schools and the reason for this is that we do think that the exposure of our children is great and we do also think that anything we can do to give them extra ability to read, to learn about people, to learn new words, to expose themselves is a life lesson.

“We are grateful to have our company support us to take our guests out to community schools every week through the Sandals Foundation,” added Zacca.

As part of the day’s activities, there was the opening of a space dubbed the ‘Word Alley’.

This is an area at the school that is emblazoned with uplifting words for the students who walk there daily.

“I think once children see words, they can relate to and they see them repeatedly, they will learn to know that these words are a part of their real life and build some real positive interactions because of the words they are going to see every day,” Zacca stated.

Tuesday’s visit was welcomed by the administrators of the school who thanked the Sandals team, and the travel agents, for partnering with the institution in that manner.

“On behalf of the board of management here at Salt Spring Primary and Infant, we owe you a debt of gratitude for having come and to establish in our midst this reading alley which will contribute significantly to the lives of our students,” board Chairman Conrad Thomas remarked.

“What you are saying to us today is that reading maketh a man, reading maketh a woman and I believe that our students can only be better for this,” added Thomas.