How many times have you read Each Peach Pear Plum by Janet and Allan Ahlberg?  Most of us have books that we read over and over to our children.  It turns out that reading a book repeatedly is a great way to start a child on the road to literacy.  If you want to read a research paper on the topic, you can read this study published by the Center for Early Literacy Learning.  Their research suggests that reading the same book for 20 minutes or more at least 4 times a month will have a strong impact on a child’s expressive language, vocabulary development and story comprehension.  When looking for more information about early literacy, I stumbled on ReaditAgain which will help you understand how to put repeated reading into action.  They give you 5 days of activities to accompany each book they have selected.  You can read the activities online or pay a small fee to buy a printed copy.  I’ll have to borrow a child so I can see how the program works in real life!  Let me know if works for you.

A year ago today Erin and I set out on our Lit Lab adventure from Seattle to Winter Park. For the last 5 days, I have been creating spreadsheets that help summarize what we have accomplished since the Lit Lab beginning in May, 2011. Though I found it a headache to work with numbers all day instead of kids, it was exciting to see how far we have come. We traveled 14,489 miles, collected about 9,000 books, gave away 5,388 books and interacted with 4,739 kids. I have to tell you that it was worth every penny and every second of time we spent. Thank you to all our friends and family members who have supported us in so many ways. A special thanks to Hoya for being our first sponsor. Together we have started to make a difference in the lives of kids who need books to become lovers of reading.

Today marked our six-week anniversary of leaving Seattle to drive the Literacy Lab all the way to Orlando, Florida! We ended the journey, appropriately, by visiting a second-grade class my mom had visited back in June, thus completing the round trip. And what a trip it has been. Over the past six weeks, we have:

• Driven through 23 states
• Visited around 20 schools, libraries, or community organizations/events.
• Given away around 2000 books (exact count to come) to around 2000 students
• Performed for 15-300 students at a time
• Talked to kids ranging from preschool to early high school about our love of reading
• Written postcards to all the schools we have visited from the next states! (There are still some to be written…)
• Visited about 45 friends and family (thanks to all of those who hosted us–words cannot describe our gratitude)

We have learned:

• We still have *a ton* to learn about Sprinter vehicle maintenance.
• With any sort of technology that we love so much and understand so little of (cars, computers, etc.), perservere, perservere, perservere! The past week has been a series of misadventures with the Literacy Lab vehicle (vehicle not starting, brake warning lights, tires worn down) and while we know next to nothing about the maintenance (see previous point), perserverence and sheer determination (desperation?) at one point made the difference between getting towed 20 miles out of our way in a random North Carolina town and being able to continue on our way. (Long story short: after stopping for dinner in somewhere in the middle of North Carolina, we couldn’t get the car started and had to call AAA, who when they arrived, informed us that the battery was fine and we’d have to get the Lit Lab towed to figure out what was wrong. We tried starting the car with a different key and it worked, go figure).
• Car keys with electronic chips in them are hard to replace when you’re on the road (one of our Sprinter car keys snapped in half about 3 weeks ago and the process to get it replaced was way more difficult than we thought it would be)
• Students love brightly colored neon wigs
• The response we have received from all the amazing, dedicated, hardworking professionals in the education world has made this trip and venture worthwhile

This past week was a great end to the trip. In Wilson, North Carolina, we visited the 1st through 3rd grades and gave away books (including some for the 4th and 5th graders on a field trip); in Hendersonville, North Carolina, we visited 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th grades at the wonderful library of Bruce Drysdale Elementary School, and today we went to Audobon Park Elementary School in Baldwin Park, Florida. I’m sad that the Professor Plot/Professor Page partnership will not be back together for a little while. We’re hoping to set something up at an elementary school in Key Largo, Florida right before I get married, but until then, we probably won’t be presenting together until sometime in the summer.

However, while we might be blogging even more sporadically than we are now, keep an eye out! While this may the end of the road trip, it is the beginning of an adventure and identity.

(Pictures to come tomorrow hopefully; I have to load them to the computer).

Wow. We have one week left! I can’t believe how quickly five weeks have passed. Thankfully I have a fiancée waiting in Seattle for me and a wedding in less than a month (!), or I’d feel a little more bittersweet. Granted, my mom and I see this trip as the beginning of our Literacy Lab adventure, but there has been something incredibly special about having the time to take a road trip across the country with my mother before I get married. Some people have told us that they would have trouble driving that distance in that length of time with their mother, but truth be told, we’ve had a blast. (The only occasional points of tension have occurred while driving in major cities trying to follow our phone GPS and in re-organizing the Lit Lab, but even those have been few and far between).

But enough of waxing nostalgic. When last I left you on the blog, we had just arrived at Rockville, Maryland. Last Sunday, we left New Jersey after a major re-packing and unloading of a ton of stuff on our friend Jane Cardwell’s garage. The reason for the unloading is that we had to fit 3 people in the backseat (5 people total!) for the drive from Rockville, Maryland to Winchester, VA. To those of you naysayers and doubters that we would be able to clear enough space, I’ll let you know that we achieved it quite well, thanks to having a lovely garage space where to store all the stuff.

Monday morning, we went to Arcola Elementary School in Silver Springs, Maryland. My aunt works in a media center and had connected us to the awesome librarian, Marty Fry. The third, fourth, and fifth grades (from about 75-100 kids at once) came to the school library and we presented our geography lesson. We realized that with larger groups, handing out books is the most challenging part because (a) there is not much time available to hand out books, (b) you have to figure out what to do with the kids who are waiting to pick out books. That’s why having students write postcards at the end has worked out so well.

Right after school ended, we drove with 2 more people in tow, to Winchester, Virginia. What we had to do that night was prepare for a school assembly of 300 fifth graders the next day. Those of you who know how my mom and I operate know that we are night owls. We do a lot of thinking and planning in our heads, but the night before a program, are usually up fairly late doing the last-minute cutting and pasting. This time was no exception. Because there were going to be 300 students at once (and since we had 3 helper bees along for the ride!), we turned the book we’ve been reading aloud into a play.

The assembly was fun! A little rough around the edges at times, but the students responded well, especially to the sitting statues game we play. The book giveaway time was when we were incredibly thankful to have friends and teachers there to help us. Students left in groups of 30 at a time to tables set up outside of the auditorium. While they were choosing books, I told a story I had learned in a storytelling class called “The Oonka Loonka Fish.” Although I had told the story before, I had never done so to such a large crowd. On the spot, I realized that I could get input from students at points throughout the story, which actually worked really well. It made me realize the power of anticipation and mystery. When people know that they might have a chance to participate and don’t know what is going to happen, they tend to be on the edge of their seats more. Or at least that is what I observed during the story.

After Winchester on Tuesday (where we left 2 of our friends, Debbie and Rachel), we drove to Richmond to visit Jane’s daughter. We bopped around Richmond on Wednesday, and then drove to Wilson, North Carolina where we met our close friend, Claire. She had set-up a visit to an elementary school for Thursday, but didn’t know the details on Wednesday night. On Thursday, when we called, it turned out the kids were having picture day and so we moved our visit to Monday (tomorrow). This left a day free for thrift store scavenging, which is, as you can tell, one of our favorite past-times. On Friday morning, we visited a local preschool. I love the elementary grades, but it’s lovely to visit preschoolers because they are so instantly excited and affectionate. A good instant gratification fix.

Tomorrow begins our last week. It’s hard to believe that all we have left in our massive road trip is 3 more programs: a visit to a school tomorrow in Wilson, NC; a visit to a school in Henderson County, NC on Tuesday; and a visit to an Orlando school on Thursday. How the time has flown!

It’s hard to believe we have passed the halfway mark of our journey! Last Monday the 10th, we departed Michigan and headed to Cleveland, Ohio for the night where we saw my brother, his girlfriend, and a good friend of mine. Then on Tuesday, we drove to Newark, Delaware because on Wednesday afternoon, we had another optometrist visit through our Hoya connection. Newark, Delaware is where the University of Delaware is. Despite growing up in New Jersey, I never had had a reason to visit Newark, Delaware (which is apparently pronounced New-ARK so as not to be confused with NEW-ark, NJ). My mom and I loved the town, which is a cute and friendly college town. Plus, right on Main St., we found an AWESOME teacher store, the Learning Station. We resisted buying a huge spinner on sale, but still managed to buy a large number of things, of course! Simon Eye Associates was another incredibly friendly location, where we had our largest turnout of kids yet–about 5. We’re realizing that we need to change our model because despite marketing efforts, kids are not showing up. However, what was awesome about this visit was that Simon Eye Associates had contacted a local organization called Paws for People, which brings therapy dogs to events. In our case, kids who came could read to a dog to practice their reading skills! The kids who were there loved these dogs…as did we! I tried to convince my mom that we should get a Literacy Lab mascot and reading dog, but we agreed that my dad would definitely not appreciate that.

After the event, we left Newark, Delaware for my hometown, Summit, New Jersey! Since my parents have moved to Florida and New York City, I don’t get back to Summit very often, so wandering around town was a nostalgic trip. Then we learned that one of my elementary school teachers was still teaching at the same school! On Thursday morning, I visited Mrs. O’Leary’s second-grade classroom to present a program. When I told the students that Mrs. O’Leary had been my teacher when I went to Brayton, their eyes all opened wide.

On Thursday afternoon, we went to a school that my mom had taught at, and on Friday, we were all day at Lincoln-Hubbard Elementary School, which had been my mom’s main school where she taught Spanish. I don’t have much new to report on how the lessons went, except that we never get bored doing them.

And then came the repacking. This time, the repacking was major: we were excited to invite my mom’s good friend and a recently retired school librarian on the rest of our trip. However, after all of our garage sale and teacher store purchases, our back seat kept on piling higher and higher, which meant there was no room! Luckily for us, this friend Jane allowed us to use her garage to take everything out and re-pack. My mom is the master of repacking. I still have a LONG ways to go…

But we made it! Jane is with us and we’re excited to be in Rockville, Maryland. We visited with my cousins last night and this afternoon are headed to a school to give away around 200 books. Yeehaw!

As usual, I’m a little behind, but better late than never, right? We had a blast in the Detroit, Michigan area, including a few new experiences that I’m excited to write about!

We arrived in Novi, Michigan (a suburb outside of Detroit) on Thursday night Oct. 7th for a wonderful home-cooked dinner with family friends. One of the super fun things about driving from coast to coast and all over the United States has been visiting friends. Particularly because I’ll be getting married in a little over a month (!!) and won’t be able to visit as thoroughly with friends and family at the actual wedding.

Anyway, on Friday, we visited 4th graders at our friend Mary Drouillard’s school, Southfield Christian School. This was the first school visit that we did outside in front of the van, which presented different challenges. As in, funny-looking caterpillars and pulling up clumps are inevitably more interesting than us in our green and rainbow wigs. (It’s hard to blame students being distracted at the end of Friday sitting outside on a beautiful day listening to crazy professors talk about geography). However, that said, I think the students still were engaged and enjoyed writing postcards. (As an aside, one of the coolest things about this school was that one of the teachers who teaches photography and graphic design to high schoolers designed individualized classrooms and hallways in the coolest ways I have ever seen. For example, the French teacher’s classroom was designed to look like a French cafe, with two walls that looked like art museum walls. In this case, the pictures are worth a thousand words–look below. And I totally covet the libraries at this school–the elementary one has a porch and a tree fort and the high school one looks like a cozy reading cafe).

On Sunday, we participated in one of the coolest events I’ve been in that I hope spreads to other cities. Focus: Hope is a civil and human rights organization diligently working to bridge the racial divide in southeast Michigan through a food program, career training programs, and an academic support program. The event was a community walk through a neighborhood of Michigan that is being revitalized. I love the model of connecting those in the community with those volunteering in the community. About 150 kids with their families visited the Literacy Lab and received a free book. Each student who came by drew a picture or wrote about their favorite book on an 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper, which we taped to the other pieces to create a book quilt. We were exhausted by the end of the event, but also enthused about the possibilities of connecting with community events like this in the future.
Hmm, photos are not uploading. One of these days, I actually will upload photos to our facebook page and here. Just not tonight.
The last thing we did in Detroit, Michigan was visit a high-needs charter school. We presented to 100 K-2nd graders all at once and then 100 3rd-5th graders all at once! It was a little wild, but actually went pretty well. We’re gearing up because in about a week, we will be presenting a program to 330 5th graders at once. Let the wild rumpus begin. (Or continue, as the case may be).

I’m a little behind because we’re having so much fun visiting friends! This past Tuesday the 4th, we drove from Janesville, WI (where we had stopped for the night) to Chicago, IL in the morning. We had to get to Wheaton (a suburb outside of Chicago) by Tuesday afternoon at 12:45pm because we had to go visit two fourth-grade classrooms at 1:00 and 1:45! By now, I feel like I’ve blogged ad nauseum about how amazing the experience has been, how glad we are that this geography unit has worked so well (and how much we keep perfecting it!), and how fascinating the book selecting process has been. What we love about doing it over and over again is hearing students’ reactions every time because they are always different. Each group of students asks slightly different questions or makes slightly different comments. At a fourth-grade classroom in Minneapolis where we gave away books, one student asked for our autographs and all of a sudden, everyone had! In Wheaton,  students wrote the most thorough postcards we had seen yet. When we were instructing students to write postcards to the next group of students, one student asked if they could address their postcard, “Dear innocent bystander,” which cracked me up. Another of our favorites read, “I have so many books at home. A garbage bag couldn’t hold all my books. I love to read!!!”

However, outside of our geography classes, what was really fun and different about Wheaton was our presentation to children at an ESL parents’ night. About 50 students attended, ranging in ages from about 2 (the younger brothers and sisters) to 13 or 14 (the older brothers and sisters). I’ve been trying to work on my storytelling skills, so I told a few stories (using props of course!). My mom, the expert ESL teacher who I absolutely love watching teach in front of groups of students, did an awesome activity for the group. She took about 12 kids and gave them each a puppet. Some of the puppets were ferocious beasts–sharks, dragons, snakes, etc.–whereas others were more sweet beasts–dogs, birds, fish, etc. The “ferocious” group lined up on one side and the “sweet” group lined up on the other side. The ferocious beasts said, “I’m going to eat you up!” The sweet beasts said, “No, don’t eat me! You should eat a ____” (and then they had to insert a food they liked). The ferocious beasts responded, “No, I want to eat you!” To which, the sweet beasts responded, “I’m going _____” (home, to school, to the library, etc.). The kids loved it. We broke for pizza and then after, we read a few stories, and then did some craft activities.

We left on Thursday to drive to Detroit. Photos and more about that to come. (Eventually, I promise! We’ve had so much fun meeting students and visiting with friends!).

I’m realizing now why social media consultant and marketing positions are actually needed for companies and organizations. Right now, it’s 10:30pm, I’ve been visiting with a friend in Janesville, Wisconsin who I haven’t seen in forever and wishing she would move back to Seattle, and I’d love nothing more than to crawl onto my comfy air mattress, continue reading Delirium by Lauren Oliver (great teen to adult read FYI), and fall into a delightful sleep. But I know that if I don’t write this blog post now, I might never. My brother recently read a book called Willpower and one of the recommendations is to set aside time to do whatever task you need willpower to do and either literally do nothing (like twiddle your thumbs nothing) or do that thing. I haven’t gotten to that point yet (um, because I would need to lose sleep to do it), but I totally get it.

Enough of me being tired and lazy. Let’s talk about how I got to hang out with *almost* my entire family this weekend (sadly, minus my fiancee)–no mean feat as my brother lives in NYC/Cleveland, my dad lives in NYC/Orlando (with my mom normally, when I haven’t absconded with her on a crazy-fun road trip), and my sister lives in St. Paul. So much fun! It didn’t hurt that the weekend was the most gorgeous Minnesota weekend. Crisp fall weather, blue skies, leaves changing color–YES. Good karma is working for us because we have not had a single bad weather day yet (please do not let this statement jinx me).

But wait, this blog is not about talking about writing blogs, willpower, or my family, ha. Let me get to what you probably really want to hear about: literacy adventures! Yesterday, we got to present a bilingual program after a Spanish Mass at the Catholic Church in Northfield, MN where Carleton College is located–the alma mater for both my mom and me! (And in fact, my dad, brother, and sister as well). We were targeting the Latino community in Northfield and had a great turnout. Kids were engaged, plus we got to give away about 30 books. My only regret is that I had not had more foresight (or more time to take care of all the marketing/social networking, or to at least delegate the marketing) to connect the event better with the Carleton community. There is a great story there, especially since my whole family went to Carleton, but I still need to work on that aspect. Next year!

This morning, we went to Bancroft Elementary School and met with 4 first-grade classes and 3 fourth-grade classes. The really fantastic things about doing the same schtick many times in many different schools is (a) we keep perfecting our routine, and (b) the students and teachers are what really make the event successful. Today, one of our favorite moments was when we were telling students about the Literacy Lab and our journal and then got to the part where we told them that they would each get a book to take home. When we said that they could keep them forever, one first-grader’s eyes lit up. “Forever??” he repeated. I wish we had caught it on videotape because that is what we are about. The other moment from this day that I’ll mention is a return to one of my earlier blog posts about judging books by their cover. In one of the fourth-grade classes, when it came time to give out books, there was one student who wanted a particular book (specifically, a book about football that his friend had picked out). We showed him all of the books we brought with us, including other sports books or other action books, but he was bummed and really only wanted this particular book. Finally, at the end when we were packing up and he hadn’t picked out a book and went back to his desk rather glumly, my mom found an exciting easy reader about Indiana Jones and asked if she could just leave it on his desk. He kind of perked up and didn’t refuse, which was a huge step up from 5 minutes previously when he just wouldn’t take a book. And it reminded me of a few things: (a) that is the type of kid who we really want to reach, (b) those type of kids are the hardest to reach. So much is written about reluctant readers, and I saw it reflected right there. What surprises me every time about students picking out books is that it’s not always about the flashy cover. Those certainly help, and we need more of those, particularly the high-interest, low-level ones but it’s also about variety. Sometimes students pick the books that look the most ratty or out-of-date to my mom and me over the brand-new-looking book sitting right beside it. So far, our book collection process has been to look for relatively new-looking (gently used is the term I like) books that cover a wide variety, which seems to work pretty well. There are still ways to perfect it, though, which is what we haven’t quite gotten to.

Phew, this blog post ended up being way longer than I intended, with not  even any pictures! I forgot to get the camera out of the car, so I will have to upload some pictures tomorrow. Thanks to those of you who stuck out to the end of this post. Tomorrow or the next day, I’m also hoping to upload some photos to our facebook page. Keep an eye out!

Today has been an AWESOME day. (And it’s not just because we made it on the local TV station and the Lincoln Journal Star, honest. Although our moment of fame is pretty fun, I will admit).  The real reason it was so awesome is that we visited this fabulous school, Norwood Park Elementary, a small elementary school of about 165 students in Lincoln, Nebraska. How this visit came about shows the power of word-of-mouth connections and just being willing to ask. I have a few college friends from Lincoln and because Lincoln is a great driving distance between Denver and the Twin Cities (about 8 hours from Denver to Lincoln; about 7 hours from Lincoln to the Twin Cities), we scheduled a stop here. Although most of these college friends no longer live in Lincoln, I sent an email explaining what I was doing and asked if they knew any teachers or librarians who might be interested in a visit from the Literacy Lab. One of them forwarded it on to a former teacher, who then responded and suggested contacts for Title I schools in the area. I sent an email to some of those contacts and the wonderful principal at Norwood Park, Pam Hale, responded. We originally set-up visits for the K-2 classes, but in our email correspondence, I mentioned that we didn’t have anything else scheduled and would be love to visit the 3rd, 4th, and 5th grades, provided that the teachers were interested. Well, she spoke to the teachers and they were. After a number of emails, I then talked with Pam on Tuesday to confirm the schedule. Yesterday, she emailed us to confirm that it would be okay if she contacted media. We arrived at my friend’s house in Lincoln last night at 8pm, arrived at the school at 8:30am this morning, and away we went.

Then we started our day, first by talking to kids in the morning walking club (those who want to walk around the front yard of the school with the principal each morning for about 15 minutes), and then visiting each grade for about 45 minutes and doing a version of our geography lesson  (adapting to the grade level of course). During lunch, we pulled the van up to the playground and got to tell students the story of the van and show off Bob the Bookbot, our robot we created out of a trash can, blinking lights, dollar-store items, and miscellaneous parts that “eats” books. We were so impressed by this school. The principal, Pam Hale, and the assistant principal, Rose Severson, were extremely warm and welcoming, as were all of the teachers. At every school we visit, we learn new things to take away and use with the next school. In this case, the school is really focused on building community within the school. Every morning, all the students get together to say the Pledge of Allegiance as well as their school values, which is a really lovely way to start the day. Students were excited and engaged, but also courteous and kind. We had so much fun, but more than that, left feeling energized about our mission of getting students excited about reading through these types of literacy programs.  I have said it before, and I will say it again: I LOVE this part of the job. Seeing students’ eyes light up when they get a book, ask a question, or participate in a discussion or activity is the best feeling in the world.

(This is a picture of us with third-graders and the Huskers flag. The Huskers is the big University of Nebraska football team, the thing to know about in Lincoln).