The celebration on Saturday, Dec. 6, also featured the school’s annual wreath sale, the lighting of its giant wreath and hot cocoa.

“It’s the start of the holiday season,” said principal Thomas Payton. “This is a magical time of year, particularly for elementary kids, and this kicks it off.”

The annual wreath sale has been a staple for the school since 2011, a year after Mr. Payton became principal. The sale acts as a fundraiser for the school’s PTO, with all of the money going back toward helping the students. 

The school’s fourth-grade singers showed off their voices, belting out three holiday tunes, led by Lily Kutner, the school’s music teacher. Following the special concert, parents joined their kids and looked up to the window above the main entrance, counting down from 10. At the end of the countdown, the window was illuminated by the school’s giant wreath, lit up with multicolored lights.

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Karla and Carlos Vasquez were all smiles at their school’s holiday celebration. (Credit: Brendan Carpenter) Madison Grigg and Amethyst Marshall braved the cold weather to celebrate with their friends. (Credit: Brendan Carpenter) Principal Thomas Payton thanked families for coming out to continue the annual tradition. (Credit: Brendan Carpenter) Music teacher Lily Kutner led the fourth-grade singers. (Credit: Brendan Carpenter) For the first time, the Riverhead Fire Department helped light up a Christmas tree for the school. (Credit: Brendan Carpenter) PTO members Cleydi Amaya, Melissa Mapes, Lindsay Raynor and Karma Marshall helped put together the festive event. (Credit: Brendan Carpenter

Mr. Payton said the wreath was originally donated by a former student’s parent. They asked if they could hang it up, and it turned into a beloved holiday tradition. 

This year’s celebration featured for the first time the help of Riverhead Fire Department, which is located directly across the street. Students, parents and administrators were happy with the surprise addition, taking pictures in front of the tree.

Families also took photos next to a blow-up Frosty the Snowman. 

After the festivities were over, everyone lined up for hot cocoa and chocolate chip cookies from the PTO, warming up holiday-style on a chilly winter night.

“We have the wreath that will be lit through the holiday season. Now, a tree, for the first time, is going to be lit through the holiday season,” said Mr. Payton. “I think that this signifies the holiday season for our students.”

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Roanoke Ave. Elementary Principal Thomas Payton’s hair before the cut. (Credit: Jahquel Blount) Barber Rashad Goff did the honors at Roanoke Elementary Friday (Credit: Jahquel Blount)

For 20 years, Roanoke Avenue Elementary School principal Thomas Payton has gone to extreme lengths to instill a love of reading in his students. His annual reading challenge isn’t part of the job description — it’s a tradition built on creativity, enthusiasm and quite a bit of good-natured self-sacrifice.

The tradition, like Mr. Payton, came out of the sprawling Clark County school district in Las Vegas — the fifth largest in the nation — which holds an annual weeklong reading campaign around the March 2 birthday of beloved children’s book author Dr. Seuss, born Theodor Seuss Geisel.

For a week, the entire school logs every minute spent reading, whether in classes, at lunch, on the bus or at home. Schools set six- and seven-figure goals, and this year’s goal for Roanoke Avenue students was to collectively read 90,000 minutes.

“It was really big in Vegas,” Mr. Payton said. “So when I came to Riverhead, I thought it would be cool to bring it with me.”

It started simply enough. “The first year, I got my head shaved and that was it,” Mr. Payton recalled last week, moments before settling into a barber’s chair on stage. “The next year, I dressed as a chicken and did the chicken dance. From there, it just kept growing. I dressed as a clown. One year, I rode in on a tricycle. Another year, the kids turned me into a human [ice cream] sundae. Every time, I had to make it bigger.”

When Mr. Payton transferred to Roanoke Avenue in 2010, the tradition came with him. Over the years, he’s faced off in a lip sync battle with a fourth-grade teacher, been bombarded with water balloons and been duct-taped to a wall. Last year, he was happy to be slathered head to toe in Silly String. This year, he circled back to the head-shave — this time with a twist.

“I had [barber] Rashad [Goff] shave the word ‘READ’ into my head,” Mr. Payton said proudly.

This year, Roanoke Avenue students didn’t just meet their goal, they obliterated it. School officials confirmed that students logged a staggering 127,000 minutes — an average of about five and a half hours of reading per child. While, there were carve-outs for the youngest students — those who can’t yet read could be read to — Mr. Payton said parents signed off on their children’s reading logs every night.

“It’s a legit log,” Mr. Payton emphasized. “Parents sign off on it. These kids did their reading.”

The effort was bolstered by creative evening events, including a Tuesday night “Curl Up with a Good Book” session with milk and cookies, where parents and students read together. Wednesday featured the school’s first-ever family game night, designed to get kids off screens and engaged in interactive activities — many of which, of course, involved books.

By Friday, anticipation had reached fever pitch. The entire student body packed into the auditorium, their chants of “Shave your head! Shave your head!” rivaling the energy of a championship game. Teachers egged on the crowd from the aisles. Sections of students clumsily attempted “the wave.” It was a scene of pure, boisterous joy.

Members Worldwide — a videography team of college students, including videographers Curtis and Daytwon Spruill and photographer Jahquel Blount — captured the excitement in a video shared with Riverhead News-Review readers.

Third-grade teacher Christine Santos’ class logged the most reading minutes schoolwide — more than 13,000.

“I tried to base everything this week off of reading,” she said, “whether it was working in groups, reading an article and then working together. I had them read their math questions, and they did a math quiz during reading. I had them do funny reading as a period, and then they worked themselves on independent reading with books and Scholastic News stories.”

Mr. Payton said each September, the first question on students’ minds is what he’s going to do for reading week.

“If I can put a little incentive in to pump them up, I’m certainly going to do that,” he said, adding that last week, the excitement in the air was palpable.

“You see kids coming back from lunch, they’re walking by our office, waving and making motions like they’re pretending to shave my head,” the principal said. “They’re just having a ball with it.”

In 20 years of reading week challenges, Mr. Payton noted, his kids have “never missed their mark.”

“I think I’m going to have to go over 100,000 minutes, because the last few years they’ve hit 120,000, 130,000, 150,000.”

Ms. Santos said it’s not just the kids who are competing.

“It’s a great tradition — super exciting — and it’s always great to have them work towards something,: she explained. “But, secretly, we all like to compete at the grade levels and Ms. [Donna] Verbeck is our veteran teacher and I always try my hardest to see if I can beat her, and I finally beat her this year.”

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Principal Thomas Payton and Assistant Principal Gary Karlson also turned one of the school bulletin boards into a display of gratitude towards staff expressed in 100 different languages.

Courtesy photos

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The students rose to the school’s annual reading week challenge and then some: Parent- and teacher-verified reading logs for the student body of approximately 400 kids in grades K-4 totaled a whopping 151,206 minutes, nearly double Mr. Payton’s target.

“It seems like every year I raise the bar for our students and not only do they hit that bar, they exceed it,” Mr. Payton said minutes before meeting his duct-tape fate. “This is always my favorite week of the year. By doing this silly stuff, I’m motivating them to read a tremendous amount for the week. Instead of going home and being on a screen, hopefully they’re going home and reading a book.”

When music teacher Roy Buccola announced the students’ impressive results over the school’s loudspeaker just minutes before the big event Friday, screams of excitement reverberated through the walls of the elementary school.

Students then stampeded down the stairs Friday to find their Mr. Payton propped atop a milk crate, back to the wall, smiling, awaiting the taping.

With rolls of tape, red, white and blue, the kids knew what they had to do. They taped him up in ones and twos, from arms and legs to black dress shoes.

This was hardly the most daunting reading week punishment Mr. Payton has endured. The worst, he said, was an onslaught of pies to the face a few years ago.

“I just smelled like sour milk afterwards,” he said. “It was disgusting.”

Perhaps the principal’s favorite was a lip-sync battle between him and a teacher. After duking it out over songs from Disney classics, Mr. Payton donned cowboy boots and a duster and clinched the championship belt with a performance of “Old Town Road.”

In other years, Mr. Payton has performed the Chicken Dance in a chicken suit, was drenched by water balloons and even had the word ‘read’ shaved into his head.

NICHOLAS GRASSO PHOTOS

But Roanoke’s reading week it not just about students embarrassing their principal. The Parent Teacher Organization hosts a Scholastic Book Fair in conjunction with the read-a-thon. Plus, the school arranges a spirit week of activities that kicked off last Monday with a “happy birthday” chorus to Dr. Seuss.

“My literacy team popped into every classroom and read a Dr. Seuss book to the kids, and they had their Dr. Seuss hats on,” Mr. Payton said. “It was also wear red day: ‘Wear red cause we’re well read.'”

Children wore hats for ‘hats off to reading’ last Tuesday, sported their favorite team’s attire for ‘team up and read’ last Wednesday, and donned pajamas for ‘curl up with a good book’ Friday.

Although the other themes of the week change year-to-year, Thursday has traditionally been reserved for the ‘poem in your pocket’ day.

“Kids write a poem, they can either make one up or use a published one, and put it in their pocket,” Mr. Payton explained. “If an adult asks them to recite it they do it and they get a pencil.”

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