Allan Appel Photo
Sendak session rivets little listeners.
Two dozen firefighters thronged the Roberto Clemente Leadership Academy Wednesday morning.
Their apparatus, Engine 11 and Truck Two from the Howard Street station, were parked outside the school’s main door.
The firefighters huddled up, and then spread out along the corridors and into the classrooms of the neighborhood K‑8 school.
They carried not axes and oxygen, but books.
The occasion was was World Read Aloud Day, which was marked Wednesday with programs throughout the New Haven school system.
Firefighters Dan Scotto and Chris Brainard prepare for performance.
The large detachment of firefighters at Clemente — there were smaller groups at the Truman School nearby in the Hill and at other locations — came about after Captain Steve Durand joined the executive committee of the International Association of Fire Fighters Local 825 and sought to increase the union’s community engagement.
His brother, Robert Durand, has been a math coach at Clemente for five years. The two have gotten together on programs over the last six months beginning with a firefighter-led community clean-up effort around the school in October.
When the school’s literacy coach expressed the desire to have visitors come in for World Read Aloud Day, Robert Durand called Steven Durand, and Wednesday’s event was organized.
The Durands, firefighter and teacher.
“Show me a kid who reads” in the early years, said Frank Ricci, and he’ll show you a future leader and citizen. Ricci, president of Local 825, was in attendance Wednesday helping Captain Durand deploy the troops to the classrooms.
Eight of the firefighters were on duty. The rest were off, giving of their free time for the effort, said Ricci.
None of the firefighters seemed nervous about the job at hand. Durand, who has three kids, expressed confidence in his training. After all, he said, he has a 6‑year-old, a 3‑year-old, and a toddler.
Still, you could detect a slight frisson in his voice when he confessed: “My 6‑year-old started to read very well, so I have to pick up my game.”
Before they went to their assignments, the school’s literacy coach, Cara Cuticello, reminded the firefighters of their mission: “We’re using today to let kids see that reading is not only in school. It’s part of everybody’s life.”
Captain Durand reads to the combined kindergarten.
That was fine with Firefighter Ian Cordero and Lt. Bill Wargo. They teamed up to read Maurice Sendak’s Where The Wild Things Are to a second-grade class.
“It should be fairly easy compared to what we do” on the job, said Cordero as he and his partner went down the hall.
Over in Nicole Valente and Tara Longley’s combined kindergarten classroom, Durand got the reading of Houndsley and Catina, by James Howe, to a rousing start.
The kids spread out on the carpet. Many wore grey wigs and other regalia to look old, celebrating the 100th day of school by trying to look 100.
Durand yielded the second chapter to Firefighter George Chin. A football coach, Chin was a relaxed natural as he read of the botched recipe that the dog Houndsley was trying to concoct. Coming across the word “tofu,” he asked the kids what they made of that.
There were no responses. So he made a face, said he’d tried it during a brief stint of experimenting to be a vegetarian, and then continued the chapter.
Firefighter Chin also coaches youth and high school football in East and New Haven.
A special treat for the kids ensued after the reading concluded. The little ones grabbed their jackets from hall lockers and trooped out for formal photos with the firefighters by the engine.
Longley hailed the event, saying reading aloud has benefits over and above kids’ reading on their own: “Hearing aloud increases comprehension and listening skills.”
The read-aloud day was not a one-offer, said Durand. Although the specific day has not been set, the firefighters are returning to Clemente in the spring with more reading and book-give-away activities.
