A great event!

This week, I saw an amazing event! I spent a couple of hours at the Swift school on the north side of Chicago. It was Swift family reading night. There are a little over 700 students at Swift, which is a port of entry school, meaning most of their students have recently moved to Chicago from other countries. Their reading scores are through the roof, thanks to Marlene Levin, the CPS reading specialist working at the school. March 23^rd was reading day.

All the kids and teachers (and even principal Harlee Till came to school in pajamas, and they sat in classrooms and read all day. Guest readers came in all day to read to the classes.

The evening was Family Reading Night, where the families of the students came in to read with the kids. In the afternoon they told me that they were worried about the attendance, due to bad weather. But.. at 5:30 the auditorium was standing room only. After a short program, people walked from classroom to classroom where teachers were reading books along with the students.

During the evening event, every child in the school was able to pick 2 books to take home with them from the approximately 3000  books that Rock For Reading donated earlier in the day!