Lynn officials read to students

LYNN – One of the last things I told the Harrington School fourth-graders to whom I read aloud for an hour Friday morning was that if they never read another book, they should devour – and then devour again – Dr. Seuss? “Oh, the Places You?ll Go.”Then, as if to accentuate my message, school principal Debra Ruggiero handed State Sen. Thomas M. McGee that very book when it was his turn to read to the students who assembled en masse in the very warm gymnasium – many of them dressed as their favorite characters from the books they?ve read (Dr. Seuss was well represented).This was “Harrington Reads” day, a labor of love for school librarian Carol Shutzer, and it was my first time reading to elementary school children since my son, who is now 34, was in the fourth or fifth grade at St. Pius V.It?s been a tough climb for Harrington, which, in four years, climbed from being a Level 4 – the lowest you can go – to a Level 1 rating (the best). Ruggiero, Shutzer and the rest of the faculty certainly have every right to be proud of that, and so do the kids who have obviously bought into what their teachers are doing.?Harrington Reads” is one of the ways this has been accomplished. An impressive array of community leaders were there, including McGee, State Rep. Brendan Crighton, School Committee members Maria Carrasco, Rick Starbard, Patti Capano and Charlie Gallo; City Council candidate Brian LaPierre, children?s author Laurie Jacobs of Swampscott, members of the Lynn Fire Department, including district chief Jack Barry and Joe Zukas of Fire Prevention; and North Shore Navigators Assistant General Manager Ashley Laramie, with team mascot “Chomps” in tow.The task was simple. Read children?s books to children, and hopefully, engage them in the lessons contained within the story. I read three short books. One of them involved a Japanese boy and a World War II internment camp and how learning how to play baseball taught him how to respond to bullies and gave his life hope where there hadn?t been any.The second one was about a tall, gawky girl who wanted to dance. But her height, and her big feet, made her somewhat uncoordinated. Like the boy in the first book, she was the object of abuse by her peers. But by the end, she?d won the coveted spot to study dance at a higher level. Those who recall the movie and TV show “Fame” will note that Debbie Allen wrote this book.The third, and perhaps best of them all, was about a little boy who worked with his father and brother in a salt mine. He was always hungry, he said, but not so much for food, but for knowledge. All he wanted to do was learn to read.Harrington is a very culturally diverse school, and kids in my assigned class were asked how many of them were multi-lingual, the majority of them raised their hands. Perhaps some of them were where this boy was – and not so long ago. They say you?re never too old to learn, and that story made me understand how much some of us take for granted. I learned to read before it had ever occurred to me that some people cannot.McGee told the children that when he was a boy, he loved to read history, and his mother was worried that he wouldn?t be exposed to other aspects of life. When she visited his teacher and related the problem, the teacher replied, “buy more history books for him, then.”The objective is to read.And, as McGee pointed out, reading leads to other interests and fields. His son loved baseball, and would devour the statistics on the Scoreboard page every day. He became interested in how those stats were compiled. He was curious enough to learn the math involved in figuring out batting averages, earned run averages and on-base percentage and slugging (OPS). And as a result of that, he became interested in studying math.?I think this event is awesome,” McGee said. “I?ve been doing this for about eight years, and Carol (Shutzer) deserves so much credit for building this up, and building up the library.”?We hope,” said Shutzer, “that one or two of the