Lincoln Park Middle School launches “One Book One Day”

Local educators at Lincoln Park Middle School introduced a new literary program they are calling “One Book One Day” in an effort to boost literacy scores and promote the love of learning. The students engaged in a campus-wide book club, where they spent the day reading, “Ghost Boys,” a novel by Jewel Parker Rhodes.

According to Lincoln Park Middle School Reading Interventionist, Zoe Blumhardt, “We have a lot of students who are still working towards meeting grade-level reading standards. We thought this would be an engaging way to kind of have a community read that would be fun for the students and also be able to be a jumping off point to promote empathy, connectedness, and have some of those bigger discussions.” Blumhardt says, “This is an event to promote literacy and a love of learning at our school. We found that lots of our kiddos have never read a book in a day. So, it’s an exciting opportunity“

The Nation’s Report Card, a comprehensive national representative assessment of educational progress that monitors student achievement, shows that Minnesota and Wisconsin literacy levels have dropped by almost 10 and seven percent, respectively, since 2019. Educators are working on finding ways to reengage students with the joys of reading a book.

“We hope that it’s not the last ‘One Book One Day’.” says Brian Kazmierczak, Lincoln Park Middle School Principal. “I think there’s a lot of opportunity with ‘One Book One Day,’ because we can align it to move within a school calendar… We could we could really focus on our diverse student population and make sure that they see themselves in the pages on the book.”