In honor of celebrating reading within the nation as well as to spread joy and enthusiasm towards literacy in children, Read Across America, an event that has taken place at Kennedy High School, is being held once again on April 9th in the quad, throughout the first four periods of the school day.
Typically occurring on Theodore Seuss Geisel’s, also known as Dr. Seuss, birthday, Read Across America is an event held on a national level that was started by the National Education Association in 1998.
Sarah Dixon, the co-lead of Kennedy’s Teacher Academy’s classes, will be in charge of organizing the event. Participating teachers will bring their students down during their participating period to help run the event and get an opportunity to help accomplish the event’s goal of spreading enthusiasm about reading and literacy to students.
Dixon stated, “I love seeing how our community members and students at school come together to create an experience that is cherished by everyone. For me as an educator, this is an opportunity for my Teaching Academy students to have further experience working with children.”
This event is expected to host 240 students from Danube and Tulsa elementary schools to join Kennedy students in reading and playing a variety of games to entertain the students. The groups at Kennedy that will be participating are students in Link Crew, ASB, RISE Council, ARC, cheer, football, band, as well as Shayleen Mallick’s forensic class.
Jason Rodriguez, the Vice President of the Teaching Academy, stated, “The importance that this has to us as leadership is the necessity for children to learn to love reading and to make it fun for them. There is also a well-known crisis in this country regarding literacy and one of the goals for this is to combat that and get children excited to read and learn.”
The students are going to start each activity with a quick book read before getting hands on, with an organized activity oriented around the book’s theme or characters within the book. For the Kindergarteners, there will be activities ranging from making plate faces, carving oreo creme into the shape of different moon phases, and creating a “grumpy monkey” to teach these students about social and or emotional learning.
There are activities dedicated to the variety of grades that will be participating. For example the first graders are going to be making caterpillar bookmarks, making oobleck, sparking what it means to be “cool”, and making their own Bina’s Brothers bracelets. The second graders are going to be making paper bag puppets, an escape room activity, making Pete the Cat’s ears, and discussing what it means to “see something, say something”. There will also be a “water protectors” booth to teach the students about the importance of water conservation as well as an eraser art activity. 
