In the hard heart of the city’s West Side, where vacant lots stretch in all directions, sits the Michael Faraday School, named for an English chemist and physicist who died four years before the Chicago Fire of 1871. One recent frigid morning in the parking lot next to the school on Madison Street, five cars pull in carrying seven women and three dogs.
They are all volunteers for an organization called Sit Stay Read!, which for five years has been bringing the joys of reading to little kids and using dogs as a tool.
“Reading aloud is a critical component of early childhood literacy, but reading in front of classmates can be an ordeal,” says MaryEllen Schneider, SSR’s executive director. “We provide the children with listeners who are attentive and non-judgmental, our dogs.”
Started in 2003 by Schneider, a former dog trainer, and Sarah Murphy, the former director of marketing for Shedd Aquarium, SSR’s mission is fueled by sad statistics: On average, a child growing up in a middle-class family will have the benefit of as many as 1,700 hours of one-on-one picture-book reading before he or she enters school, while the child in a low-income family will have 25 hours.
“We want to go where we will have the most impact,” says Schneider. “The dogs increase confidence and generate excitement about reading.”
Excitement is all over the faces of the kids in the 2nd-grade Faraday classroom. It is a bright and colorful room. As the dogs and people enter, there are smiles on the faces of the 12 students. This is a small gathering by the standards of SSR, which often visits classes with as many as 32 kids.
Today’s book is “The Lucky Puppy.” “It is all part of a text-to-world connection,” says Schneider. “Read about a dog. See a dog. Touch a dog.”
The teacher is Sophia Stavropoulos, who left the corporate world a few years ago and who finds the weekly SSR visits “a great deal of fun, with good books and great rapport.”
The school’s principal, Dr. Shirley Scott, visits the room and says, “This has a tremendous impact.”
Faraday is lucky. There are currently some 30 people/dog teams and almost 100 other volunteers visiting eight schools in the city, but the waiting list now numbers 30 schools and is growing as word spreads. If you have a dog (SSR will work with each team to prepare for the classroom), or spare time or extra money, go to www.sitstayread.org.
The results are palpable. And rewarding. In the hour that the SSR people and dogs are in the Faraday classroom, each child gets individual attention from the people/dog teams and other, dogless, volunteers, called book buddies. It is just that attention that Jaylin Hargrove (in Osgood’s photo) is getting from Lisa Wiersma and her dog Turner. One of the dogs, a cute Bichon named Wrigley, gives each kid a hug after their reading session. Watching this, it is impossible not to feel happy and hopeful. The kids? They just giggle and keep on reading.
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rkogan@tribune.com
