Southern View Elementary<\/a>, a first grade class gets a visit each month from Nathan Briggs, a volunteer the students call Mr. Nate. Briggs has read a book a month to first-graders for the last three years.<\/p>\n\u201cIt sounded like a really cool program and opportunity to do a little bit more volunteer work, especially in the local community,\u201d Briggs said. \u201cI\u2019ve been very fortunate to come here and read to them,\u201d Briggs said.<\/p>\n
Originally, reading to the kids was a little intimidating. But Briggs said that fear went away after just one classroom visit.<\/p>\n
Briggs said his visits have become something he looks forward to each month.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s fun to see the progression throughout the school year and all the times. By the end of the year, they\u2019re like greeting me at the door with a big hug,\u201d Briggs said.<\/p>\n
Briggs said these days are often the highlight of his week, and he walks away from the school feeling a deep sense of joy.<\/p>\n
Each month, students receive a copy of the book read to them to take home, building a home library over time.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s so important to read at home and to be involved with the family,\u201d Briggs said. \u201cOne little girl today said she had a copy of this book already, so she was going to give the new one to her sister. I think that\u2019s great. It just keeps that joy for reading spreading.\u201d<\/p>\n
About 100 men volunteer for the Real Men Read program across Springfield Public Schools. This is the fourth year in a row the program has been running.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"About 100 men volunteer across the district to read to first and third graders. SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (WAND) \u2014…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":312056,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[128,130,129],"class_list":["post-312055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=312055"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312055\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/312056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=312055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=312055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}