Read Across America

River Oaks Elementary School in Gulfport participated in the fun of “Read across America Day” with a little friendly competition.
Students dressed as their favorite book character paraded around the school as part of “Read across America Day.” Today’s event had the school’s classes divided into two teams each headed by the school’s social worker, Mr. Harris, and the school’s librarian, Dr. Gaines. The winning team with the most books read got to pie the losing team’s coach in the face.
As the student with the most books read in one day, second grader Shaylee Baham got to pie Dr. Gaines. Mr. Harris’ team won the competition by 289 books, coming in at 2,297 books all together. “All in good fun, all in good fun. I think it definitely boosts the morale of our school. It boosts the morale of our teachers as well. It just as a total boosts the morale for our whole school collectively,” said Harris.
River Oaks Elementary Principal Shelly Simmons said, “We’re excited to have North Gulfport students come every year especially, well we’re excited to have them all come, especially because a lot of them were basically alumni from River Oaks that came back and were able to read to some of the younger kids today. That’s exciting.”
All together the school exceeded last year’s goal of 2,500 books with 4,305 books read by the entire school.