📚🏀❤️ The North Buncombe High School (NBHS) men’s and women’s varsity basketball teams scored slam dunks as they shared their love of reading with pre-k students.
For Children’s Book Week, the players gathered individually and in groups to read aloud as 3-5-year-old children smiled and gazed in awe. The get-together promoted the importance of reading to children and introduced the athletes to an innovative pre-k learning environment. North Buncombe’s five-star pre-k learning lab is one of four such pre-k classrooms at Buncombe County Schools high schools. The learning labs provide top quality care and instruction for young children while providing opportunities for high school students to familiarize themselves with early childhood education, achieve certifications, and nail down future opportunities.
NBHS Junior Class President Tripp Switzer plays power forward and small forward for the Blackhawks, but on Thursday he wore a Tigger onesie and had his reading buddies enraptured by several books. He said he loved watching the little kids get excited about reading.
“It gives us a chance to be leaders, grow as a team, and share these reading skills with them,” he said. “We definitely had a lot of fun.”
NBHS senior Gracie Edmunds, a power forward, said she and the other players got a lot of value from the heartwarming experience.
“It’s important for us to bond outside of basketball, so it’s not just about working on those skills,” she said. “And it’s really good for the kids to have someone they look up to, someone they see every day.”