Read Across America

NEA is calling for every child in every school in every community to be in the company of a book to celebrate Dr. Seuss's birthday on the evening of March 2^nd. Last summer, NEA's Urban Commission sponsored a "Green Eggs to Hamlet" Read-In at the Representative Assembly. It was so successful, the NEA decided to go national.

Research shows that when children read outside of school, they do better inside of school. Read Across America offers a great opportunity to motivate children to read and work with parents and others in our communities to help children learn.

Local NEA affiliates are targeting schools, libraries, and bookstores to get them to sponsor special events. Some children will read at home with their families. Other young people will arrive at school, pillows in hand, for a bedtime read-in.

Plus, local firefighters will host evening read-athons at the local firehouse. Older children will read to younger ones. The list goes on.

The NEA is finding that when our state and local Associations are involved, there's no end to the creative ideas..

Ready to plan a Read Across America event of your own town? Specific suggestions are listed below.

• Call your NEA local affiliate to see what's being planned. If nothing is in the works yet, gather colleagues, brainstorm, and make something happen.

• Reach out in your community -to the PTA, school and public libraries, bookstores, firehouses, hospitals and police stations.

• Don't be afraid to be creative. Reach out to TV and radio celebrities, your mayor, the police chief, business leaders, clergy, and local authors to help plan read-athons all over town. Suggest that people dress up in costumes depicting their favorite book characters.

• To get ten more ideas, visit the Read Across America Web site at www.nea.org/readacross or call our Fax-on-Demand service toll-free at 888/747-READ or call us at 202/822-7830.

By Denise Rockwell Woods

NEA Executive Committee Member

January 1998 Vol.16, No. 5