NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) – A teacher at Metro Nashville Public Schools Shwab Elementary School has organized a fundraiser to set up a book vending machine where students can earn books through good behavior that they can keep, but asked for help from the community to raise the final funds.

“We’re a Title I school,” explained Lindsey Mayfield, a Shwab Elementary School art teacher who started teaching at the school nearly five years ago. “Many of our children live in poverty. They come to school, they don’t have coats, they don’t have jackets, they are hungry. So sometimes our meals are the only meals they receive.”

Needless to say, Mayfield knew food wasn’t the only challenge her students’ families faced.

Claire Kosky

She said she first spotted the book vending machine on social media when a school in another city received one.

“I saw a few other schools do it and I was like, ‘Man, I really wish I had this. It’s so cool. I read to my kids during art class, I try to find a book that either relates to their socio-emotional well-being, their SEL, or relates to my content,” Mayfield explained. “It kind of comes into my classroom function and flow. And then it’s also good for them to hear good literacy and good pronunciation so they become better readers.”

Knowing the power of literacy, Mayfield filled out the paperwork from a book vending machine and began working with his school to find ways to incorporate it into his students’ days at Shwab where a bee is the mascot. from school.

Claire Kosky

“We give out these Bee Bucks, some paper money, and they can spend it and we usually do a ‘Bee Bucks Store,’ [is] what we call it,” Mayfield said. “And we do the Bee Bucks Store after every semester, so we just had one at Christmas and we get these funds that we have like legit toys like scooters and bikes , and Barbies and LOL dolls. You name it, we got it.”

Students at Shwab Elementary School can earn Bee Bucks for good behavior throughout the school day with a goal of at least five dollars a day to spend at the school store, participating in school activities or possibly at the school book vending machine.

“This vending machine…they say, ‘I want to buy a book.’ And so you know 20 Bee Bucks, and then…we’ll give them the coin and then they put in the machine they can pick out a book,” explained Mayfield.

Claire Kosky

“We’re trying to find those incentives for kids to keep coming to school to be diligent and to be successful academically and academics will go along with the behavior,” Mayfield explained.

After reading to children at her school for years, she said the book vending machine seemed like a useful tool for kids to earn books they can keep.

“When I read to children right here on this carpet, it stops life,” she said. “It makes them kind of – like they’re all still in a trance, they’re so in tune with the book. It’s crazy, like how much a book can really change like anything about a child the way which it sits in their feelings and it can really make them think about things.”

Claire Kosky

With more than $4,000 left to raise Wednesday, Mayfield hopes the community will see the benefit of helping a child learn to read.

“I just think a little little thing can really help that kid get through the day and feel good about finishing a day at school. Because I mean, a lot of kids, they have their worries at home: what am I going to eat “Where am I going to sleep? But you know, this book could be that calming place to put all those worries to rest,” Mayfield said. “And that would be a factor for a lot of our kids to have some kind of incentive like that to just be able to have that opportunity. And that’s what the school provides opportunities and whatever form they come in.”

To learn more about Mayfield’s mission and to to donate to its book vending machine fund, click here.

Claire Kosky