COSTA MESA : Stressing Importance of Reading to Kids

Health-care professionals read aloud to elementary school children Friday, stressing the importance of education during “Medical Read Aloud Day,” a PTA program at Paularino Elementary School that brings working adults together with students.

Last spring, judges, lawyers and law clerks visited from Municipal Court in Newport Beach to talk with students about legal careers.

FHP Inc.’s office in Costa Mesa joined in a business partnership with the school at 1060 Paularino Ave., after an administrator toured the school in March, said Principal Brooke Booth. The health-care firm sent about 15 nurses and other workers to the school Friday and donated a new fax machine.

Nancy Rotondi, a reception supervisor for a Costa Mesa health-care center run by FHP Inc., read to third-graders in Karlena Kraft’s class.

“This is the time to learn to read well, so you can get the jobs you want,” Kraft told the students. Reading from an illustrated children’s medical book called “Your Insides,” she asked the students to identify pictures of bones, arteries and muscles.

Aleem Mohammed, 8, said his favorite part of the presentation was the X-rays of hands, feet and skulls that Rotondi passed around. Mohammed recalled that he could have cracked his own skull recently when he fell off his bike, but was unharmed because he was wearing a helmet.

Kraft said her students already like to read, but it helps to have professionals speak up for the importance of reading skills because the message comes from “somebody who is really involved and working--other than their parents and teachers,” Kraft said.

But parents also do their part. Kraft said parents do not allow many of her students to watch more than 30 minutes of television each day. That helps, Kraft said, because the students then turn to books for stories.

And when students recently read the story “Stone Fox,” and then saw the movie version, most of them enjoyed the book more, Kraft said.

“The book had more action in it; it was better,” said 9-year-old Jonathan Powell of the book, which described a young boy’s attempts to run a farm.