Reading
NEA Names First ACATemy Award Winners

As 20 million children and adults celebrated NEA’s third annual Read Across America, the first four ACATemy Awards were presented at NEA headquarters.

Movie stars have their Oscars and musicians their Grammys. Now, NEA and readers across America have awarded the first-ever ACATemy Awards to four individuals who exemplify the very best spirit of the beloved Dr. Seuss (Theodor Geisel) on the day commemorating his 96th birthday.

The Golden Cats were awarded March 2 during Read Across America festivities at NEA Headquarters before a Cat in the Hat-bedecked audience of school children, educators, political leaders, local celebrities, and media. Honored were Reading Rainbow host and executive producer LeVar Burton, 92-years-young reading mentor Minnon Friedman, and NEA members Edward Sheerin and Mary Ann Gensicke.

“Books have the ability to transform lives,” said award winner LeVar Burton, whose commitment to reading can be seen in his 17 years with the acclaimed PBS program, Reading Rainbow. Noting that his mother, an avid reader and teacher, set an example for him, he stressed, “Children need to learn that reading is a natural part of life. We eat, we sleep, we read.”

Honoree Minnon Friedman, who at the age of 89 became a reading mentor for the school-based literacy organization Everybody Wins! DC, said, “I don’t know how I can get a reward for something I love doing.” The retired teacher accepted her statuette from nine-year-old Sarah Braun, her reading partner for the past four years.

Edward Sheerin volunteers to teach reading to disadvantaged school children after hours of teaching kindergarten in Santa Rosa, California.

“Some kids are really up against it,” he said. “They don’t know what it’s like to sit in their mom’s lap and be read to, to know others care and that they have a future.” Sheerin, who uses poetry, drama, folklore, and fairy tales to reach “hard to reach” kids, received the 1997 Certificate of Congressional Recognition from the U.S. Congress for his commitment to reading and education.

Tying on her special reading apron, honoree Mary Ann Gensicke, the singing librarian, sang her acceptance. Gensicke—a former teacher of 23 years who now is a library media specialist at Monroe Early Childhood School in Cedar Rapids, Iowa—engages students in books through creative costumes and performances.

“I represent so many wonderful, dedicated teachers and librarians who have given their life to reading and children,” she said.

ACATemy award winners were nominated from applications to more than 30 NEA national partner organizations, and final selections were made by a panel of Read Across America volunteers. The Golden Cat statuettes were crafted by area high school students.

Reading Resources

• The International Reading Association will host "Learning to Teach Reading: Setting the Research Agenda" April 29 in Indianapolis, Indiana. The conference, scheduled immediately prior to IRA’s 45th Annual Convention, includes concurrent sessions on teacher education, connections from research to application, the impact of professional standards, and more. The registration fee of $150 for IRA members and $175 for non-members includes transcripts from each session. Register online.

• The National Institute for Literacy relates low literacy to unemployment, poverty, and crime. The Institute reports four in 10 Americans with low reading skills live in poverty and that 70 percent of the prison population falls into the two lowest levels of reading proficiency. NIL research also notes that 75 percent of today's jobs require at least a ninth-grade reading level and that workers lacking a high school diploma earn a mean monthly income of $452, compared to $1,829 for those who have a bachelor’s degree.

• The National Research Center on English Learning and Achievement provides online information about reading and writing instruction. Newly released is Effective Integrated Language Arts Instruction (Pre-K-4), identifying effective classroom practices for literacy learning, including how to prevent reading difficulties in most at-risk students.

• For useful ideas, programs and research on reading, visit Reading Is Fundamental.

• Reading Recovery: A Guidebook for Teachers in Training (Heinemann), by Marie M. Clay, is a guidebook for training teachers to deliver an early intervention program designed to reduce literacy problems.

• An Observation Survey of Early Literacy Achievement (Heinemann), by Marie M. Clay, introduces teachers to ways of observing children’s progress in the early years of learning about literacy.