Open Book Program Featured in Chicago Tribune

Tribune Photographer Marina Makropoulos took these photos
during the June 5, 2010 Author Event with Sharon Draper.
TOP PHOTO: Nerisa Trujillo, right, and Destiny Fitz of Armstrong Elementary School perform scenes based on a book by author Sharon M. Draper, as part of the Open Book after-school program. The event took place at Gregory Elementary.
BOTTOM PHOTO: Mikeah Poe, center, and classmates from Univerisity of Chicago-Donoghue Elementary School perform their skit.

About 250 elementary and middle school students could barely be contained as they gathered on a recent morning at Gregory Math and Science Elementary Academy. The hip-hop music blared as they cheered with pompoms in their school colors.

But it wasn't a pep rally that had them pumped up. Students in the rafters were cheering their peers who were putting on competing skits based on novels they read as part of the Open Book Program. The after-school program is designed to motivate students about the joys of reading. The skits, written by the students, were performed before the books' author, Sharon M. Draper.

Armstrong Elementary's Sandra Johnson beamed as Javon Berry, 8, at the last minute stepped into the lead role of Ziggy (from "Ziggy and the Black Dinosaurs: The Space Mission Adventure"). Javon could barely read 12 words per minute around Christmas, but there he was interpreting, along with the other young actors, the adventures of a family trip to Space Camp in Huntsville, Ala.

Among the nine schools competing, Armstrong took second place.

"He learned that part today," Johnson said proudly. "They may say we don't get paid enough. … Just seeing him bloom the way he did … speaking out and taking that ownership (of the role) was more than any monetary gift you can receive."

The program consists of three eight-week sessions held in Chicago Public Schools and includes two books, one geared to elementary grades and the other geared to middle schoolers. It focuses on lower grades because it's more difficult to change reading behavior once a child reaches high school, said the Rev. Marrice Coverson, founder of the Institute for Positive Living, which runs the program. It also includes a supplemental writing program.

"The kids read the book, learning the meanings of those words and get a feeling for the vocabulary. That is part of the excitement, and then they develop their own performances from what they read," said Coverson. "If you get excited about reading, you will become a lifelong reader."

Authors whose works have been featured are poet and illustrator Hope Anita Smith and publisher and author M. LaVora Perry. Topics have ranged from peer pressure to the loss of a parent.

Smith said she was overwhelmed by students' talent and interpretations of her books, "Keeping the Night Watch," a father who leaves the family temporarily after losing his job, and "Instructions on How to Lose a Mother and Other Poems," about a young girl coping with death.

They delivered the performances with conviction. I thought it was amazing and hard to choose a winner," Smith said.

Coverson, who started the Open Book Program in 1999, said cutbacks in state funding could mean the program will not exist in the next school year. She said that her operating budget has been as much as $900,000 in the 2008-09 fiscal year and as little as $700,000 in 2009-10, but that there is currently no funding for next year.

CPS spokesman Frank Shuftan said the district is still awaiting final development of its 2010-11 budget.

Parents and teachers say that the program is making significant strides in literacy on the local school level and that its loss would be a mistake.

Armstrong’s Johnson said life without Open Book in the schools would be the “worst thing for the children. You tap into every facet of learning. But you’ll never sit it if you don’t see these types of opportunities.

Linette Gordon, a parent aide at Armstrong, said that since her son Christopher has been in the program, his grade average has improved to a B from a C. If a program like Open Book had been available when she was his age, Gordon said maybe she would not have had to struggle so much with reading.

“I didn’t like to feel like I was behind. I wanted be an above average student,” she said. Because of her son’s involvement, Gordon said she has also found a renewed interest in reading, often getting into a friendly competition with her son to see who can finish the book first.

“This is something I could never do at their age,” said Gordon.