E-Chievement Award--What an Honor!

A big thank you to E-town radio for honoring the work of Sit Stay Read with the prestigious E-Chievement Award. Listeners from around the country send in nominations and we were chosen!

Here's Shandy posing with the award and modeling her snazzy E-town bandanna.

Grammy winner Jakob Dylan was the featured musical guest on the radio show as well--how cool is that? Click here to listen to the interview online.

This is a very special recognition for Sit Stay Read and the wonderful kids the program serves. Many thanks to our fabulous supporters and volunteers for making it all possible!

Our Volunteers Know How to Party!

Volunteer Appreciation Celebration 2010

Sit Stay Read's annual Volunteer Appreciation Party was a ton of fun! Held last Tuesday at Mrs. Murphy's and Sons Irish Bistro, everyone had a great time.

Honoring the hard work of all our fabulous volunteers was the focus of the evening. Among the highlight's was the announcement of Jennifer Cristina as 2010 Volunteer of the Year and a special presentation to our longest serving dog team. Click on the photo to see our special honorees and more action shots by our volunteer photographer, Bill Shomaker.

Many thanks to everyone for making 2009-10 a great year of reading fun!

Fun Packs Instead of Summer School?

An article in yesterday's Sun-Times, "Are books just as good as summer school?", stopped me in my tracks. As if these smiling faces from one of our Reading Rewards celebrations aren't proof enough, there's new research that shows the importance of children having books to read over the long summer vacation.

By sixth grade the "summer slide" in academics accounts for as much as 80% of the achievement gap for low-income students. But not for our Sit Stay Read students--they have Summer Reading Fun Packs to keep them reading and writing all summer long!

Reading Rewards Underway!

The Reading Rewards celebrations are underway and, as you can see, the kids are soooo thrilled!!!

We're still up to our eyeballs here in the Sit Stay Read office wrapping-up the school year but you can count on seeing more photos of the on-going RR celebration excitement soon.

New this year, were surprise special guests at the celebrations. Here's a photo of our Hendricks Academy top reader, Rayshawn (62 books read!) with George McCaskey, one of the owners of the Chicago Bears (and a great SSR supporter through Bears Care), and fire fighter Joe Pryst.

Many thanks to everyone who makes these celebrations possible--our generous donors, fabulous volunteers (two- and four-legged), and special guests. As teacher David Groves put it, “Sit Stay Read is so exciting for the kids and sends a powerful message that the community is excited about their accomplishments and is invested in their continued academic success!”

It's not too late to lend a hand--please donate today!

A Dream Comes True

You may have heard me say that a dream of mine is to have our SSR kids come back to us to volunteer. Well, while I truly believed that would happen one day, I never imagined it would be so soon (kids today are so advanced!)

Meet Carly, age 6, reading to Shandy in our very first program at Sulzer Library in 2003. Seems Carly never forgot her friends at SSR so when she needed a service project for school, she told her mom she'd like to help SSR.

After a visit to the office last week with her mom and her sister Sheila (also in our first program) to learn about volunteering, Carly signed-up to help out in the office after school on Wednesdays. How cool is that?

But wait, there's more. There's also Ariana, a new friend of SSR. For Ariana's 7th birthday she asked friends and family to donate to SSR in lieu of gifts (see Ariana's tribute page.) She decorated a pail to collect the donations and asked her mom if she could bring her pail to the office and, maybe get to meet one of the SSR dogs.

Perhaps you can see where this is going--when Ariana came to the office she not only met Shandy, the original SSR dog, but Carly helped her read to Shandy! We were bursting with joy at seeing the girls together. Check-out the photos here and let us know what you think of these great kids!

Joan Baez & Sit Stay Read

Many thanks to Sit Stay Read supporter Brian Gregory for nominating us for our very first award! And not just any award, but the same one that Joan Baez received just two weeks ago in recognition of her music and activism.

The e-chievement award is presented by the national radio show etown to recognize "people around the country who've found positive solutions to challenges in their communities."

SSR will be honored with the award at the live show in Boulder, CO this Sunday. The show is taped and will air on WDCB 90.9FM in Chicago at 9pm on a Friday in a few weeks. We'll keep you posted on the exact air date for our show--which also features Jakob Dylan (son of Bob.) Very exciting!

Bandit & Jack Learn a Trick

One of the many great things about taking your dog to work is that you have more opportunities for training. Lucky us, Jack and Bandit love to learn!