March 1 was Read Across America, a day in which America celebrates reading. Miss Tri- Counties, Laura Hampikian, was invited to read to five different classes at Lena Whitmore Elementary School. Her is an accounting of her trip to Whitmore.
"The first class that I went to was a fifth grade class. First I read to them. After, upon finding out that singing was my talent, they asked me if I would sing to them. They specifically asked me to read “Oh the Places You’ll Go” to the tune of the Star Spangled Banner. I am proud to say that I obliged them.
In the second class, one student asked me to sign an autograph for him. I said I could do that, but then nfortunately didn’t anticipate that the rest of the class would want autographs as well. After I read them my book, I signed as many autographs as I possibly could. While I was signing, I took some questions from the class. Again, the class wanted to hear me sing. However, this time the requests were even more fun. I was asked to sing Usher. Usher! I didn’t know that kids still listened to Usher! Growing up in Atlanta, I am proud to say that have a repertoire of Usher songs memorized in my head, so I did a quite review to see if there were any that had clean lyrics. Thank you, Usher, for keeping at least the first verse of “Burn” relatively clean. So I did it. I sang Usher in front of a fifth grade class. And I even got applauded. I did discover that perhaps it is time for me to add some Taylor Swift into my list of memorized songs. I got a request to sing that it every class I went to (as well as a great many protests against me singing Taylor Swift from the boys in the class)!
In the last class I was eagerly asked, “Are you the queen of Moscow??!” To which I replied, “Well, yes, sort of!” Another student asked me, “Has anyone ever bowed down to you before?” I had to reply that honestly, no, no one has ever bowed down to me. Next thing you know the whole class was bowing down! Those kids are so silly."