Faraday takes its love of reading to the road

Faraday School publicly proclaimed their love of reading…all over their teacher’s truck. 

Faraday teacher Marc Fillion challenged his Grade 1 class to collectively read 200 books in February in celebration of I Love to Read Month. If the students reached their goal, Fillion promised them they’d get to do something “fun and wild.”

Upon completing the challenge, last year’s bunch of bookworms painted Fillion’s beard. With a total of 254 books read, this year’s class upped the ante and painted his truck. 

“They know I like to brag about my truck. I’ve got a nice truck. Don’t ever touch my truck,” said Fillion, who owns a 2016 Toyota Tacoma TRD. 

“So, for them to actually paint my truck, ‘Oh, the atrocity! Oh, the calamity!’ It’s been a running joke for the four years I’ve taught at Faraday. ‘Don’t touch Mr. Fillion’s truck!’”

With Fillion’s permission, the students tagged his Toyota with “I love to read” and other heartfelt messages, as well as hearts, smiley faces and other designs. 

Of course, the students used a water washable paint. They also maintained physical distancing, with four students allowed to paint at a time, two on each side of the truck. 

“I strategically parked the truck so people coming and going could see that clearly it wasn’t an act of vandalism,” Fillion said. “It was an advertisement of the learning we’re doing at Faraday.”

“We even had a person in a service vehicle pull over and say, ‘That’s really cool!’”

To achieve their goal of reading 200 books, the students were tasked with taking their home reading bag home each night, read their books, and then add their readings to the class tally. 

“We tied it into math and we tied it into social and emotional wellbeing with being honest,” Fillion said. “I said, ‘If you tell me that you read it, I’m going to believe you’ because we talked about truth and honesty and when people lie, it only hurts their own heart.”

“So, what would happen is they’d keep counting. ‘Mr. Fillion, we’re at 75 tallies!’ and ‘Mr. Fillion, we’re at 125 tallies!’ They were self-motivated. It turned into them managing their own project to achieve a goal. And the goal was to building responsibility and the reward was something fun.”

The students throughout enjoyed the rare opportunity to touch-up Mr. Fillion’s treasured truck. 

“It was fun to paint our teacher’s truck just because we love to read,” said Rosalynn, a Grade 1 student.

“It’s fun to paint a car and learn to take care of books and read them,” said Matthew, a Grade 1 student.

As for Fillion, he’s grateful that the paint did in fact come off in the car wash. 

“I was pleasantly relieved,” Fillion said. “It did take a little elbow grease though.”