State News

CT. First Lady and City Leaders Join National Reading Drive
to Showcase Hartford’s Early Childhood Education Plan

Hartford - About 50 leaders in education, philanthropy, public service and the arts fanned out to classrooms in every Hartford elementary school to read the same book to the city’s 2,500 preschool and kindergarten students. The book, “Llama Llama Red Pajama,” a bedtime story by Anna Dewdney about a baby llama that has trouble falling asleep and grows lonely for its mother, was also read to about 2 million children nationwide, as part of the Sixth Annual Jumpstart Read for the Record Campaign. Organizers kicked off the campaign on NBC’s Today Show.

 
Hartford’s celebrity readers included Connecticut First Lady Cathy Malloy, Mayor Pedro E. Segarra, Darko Tresnjak, artistic director of the Hartford Stage, Edward Forand, chairman of the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving, Dr. Michael
Coyne, Reading Research Scientist at the University of Connecticut and Attorney Jeffrey Dressler. “I am thrilled to have families and partners who are working with the Hartford Public Schools to develop a love for books in our youngest children,” Dr. Kishimoto said.

“The continued work that we must engage in to increase literacy levels in our City hinges on a collective effort across sectors and agencies.” Jumpstart is a national early education organization that recruits thousands of volunteers to help preschool children in low income neighborhoods develop the language and literacy skills they need to succeed academically. The Read for the Record Campaign was designed to raise awareness of the early education achievement
gap and to encourage families to help close the gap by reading to their children. Read for the Record is particularly
relevant to Hartford because it helps highlight Superintendent Kishimoto’s early childhood education initiative – The Third Grade Promise — whose driving purpose is to have every child reading at or above grade level by the time he or she completes third grade. “Research shows that a child reading at or above grade level by the end of third grade
can transition from learning to read to reading to learn a variety of subject matters that are part of the fourth through
12th grade curriculum,” Dr. Kishimoto said. “Therefore, that child has a significantly greater likelihood of graduating high school and having a successful college career.”

Hartford’s reading event was organized by Dr. Beryl Irene Bailey, the district’s director of Elementary Literacy. Celebrity readers began their morning by gathering at 9:00 a.m. in the Betances Early Reading Lab School at 42 Charter Oak
Ave. The Pk-3 elementary school was specifically designed as the flagship school to develop Hartford’s reading teacher leaders who will lead the work of the Third Grade Promise. Each reader received a school assignment and a copy of “Llama Llama Red Pajama” with instructions on how to engage the class in the book reading and what vocabulary words to emphasize.

“The Jumpstart Read for the Record Event symbolizes Hartford’s Village participating and partnering to educate our children,” Dr. Bailey said. “In truth, the only way we will truly close this literacy gap is to become partners in the promise.”
The book was read between 10:00 a.m. and 10:45 a.m. in every one of the city’s 27 elementary schools. Each school also hosted a family assembly in which principals read the book to parents and encouraged them to read a book a day to their children to help fulfill The Third Grade Promise.