LEAP Reads In On The Green

Top: Dixwell Site Coordinator Darcus Henry, Jr., once a "LEAP Kid" himself, gets students excited to read. Bottom: Reign. Samir Iydroose Photos. 

Reign was between two worlds. In one, she sat on the New Haven Green with hundreds of other young readers, ready to celebrate literacy beneath a warm summer sun. In another, she was in England during the Second World War, and engineer Beatrice Shilling was a leader in her field—despite the obstacles she had had to jump over, simply because she was a woman.

In Shilling, Reign saw something of herself—and stayed focused on the story unfolding in front of her, thanks to reader Emily Miron.

Friday morning, dozens of similar interactions came to downtown New Haven thanks to Leadership, Education, Athletics in Partnership’s (LEAP) 26th annual Read-In on the New Haven Green, a celebration of summer reading that was at turns a pep rally, volunteer bonanza and giant youth book club. Held to support the 950 kids currently enrolled in LEAP’s summer programming, the event called on volunteer readers from across the community, knitting New Haven together with a love for literacy. Students continued reading with their "DEAR" (that's Drop Everything and Read) time after volunteers had finished. 

“The read-in is the only event when all of the LEAPers and counselors from each of the sites are together, so we have to think about the scale,” said Rachel Kline Brown, vice president of development and communications for the organization. This year, that included 80 volunteers, dozens of blue-and-orange shirted counselors and counselors in training, hundreds of kids and several city, state and federal elected officials.

They included U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker, State Sens. Martin Looney and Gary Winfield, and New Haven Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Madeline Negrón.

NHPS Superintendent Dr. Madeline Negrón. Behind her are Downtown Alder Elias Theodore, State Sen. Gary Winfield, State Rep. Al Paolillo, State Sen. Marty Looney and U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro. 

From the very beginning of the day, the energy was high. Former “LEAP kid” Darcus Henry, Jr., who grew up in the organization, worked as a counselor for years, and is now the Dixwell Site Coordinator, revved young LEAPers up with an “energizer,” meant to “get everyone really hype.” He said that he uses the same energizers as when he was a kid.

And hype up the crowd he did. “I said a finger lickin’, hot sauce drippin’ fried chicken wing,” he called out at one point, waiting for the response. “A-ha. Oh Yeah.” Around him, a haphazard circle– really, more of a trapezoid– of students in orange shirts shouted the words back.

“I said a finger lickin’, hot sauce drippin’ fried chicken wing. A-ha. Oh Yeah,” echoed close to 1,000 volunteers, counselors, and LEAPers.

Several elected officials carried that momentum forward. Lamont talked about his children, and their connections to J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, especially to the names of the characters. DeLauro said that “reading opens up so many worlds for you,” and went on to quote a passage of Doctor Seuss’ Oh, The Places You’ll Go. Winfield talked about how he didn’t always have stable access to books as a child, and how he prioritizes reading now, both in the state legislature and at home with his children.

With just over a half-hour to read before lunch, the volunteers began right away. Emily Miron, a health equity operations administrator at Yale New Haven Health who was volunteering at LEAP for the first time, chose a book called The Girl Who Could Fix Anything: Beatrice Shilling, World War II Engineer.

Top: U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro waxes poetic on the power of reading. Bottom: Emily Miron reads with students. 

Miron, conscious of the fact that she was about to read to 9 and 10 year old girls, chose a book about women and prejudices against them. The picture book follows Shilling, an English woman, as she grows up and becomes an engineer, despite the field being predominantly male.

The seven girls in Miron’s group were initially disengaged: waving their handheld fans, picking at the errant clover leaf, and playing with a squishy toy called NeeDoh. But, by about the third page, when Beatrice had found an apprenticeship in London, all of the kids had leaned in.

The book was punctuated by the phrase “Beatrice wasn’t quite like the other ...” and after each instance, Miron would ask the group" “Why isn’t she like the other ... ?”

When Beatrice wasn’t quite like the other students, Miron asked what is different about Beatrice. Reign, a rising 5th grader, raised her hand, along with several of her peers. She said that the rest of the class was boys.

“I liked the book, because it says that so that girls can do things, not just boys,” Reign said. “Sometimes people think that I cannot do things because I am not a boy. The girl was brave enough to do all that stuff.”

Paula, a rising 5th grader, said liked the book “because I don’t know.” She elaborated, saying, “Some books is like fun, and I don’t know.”

After Beatrice invented a precursor to the washer, and the book had concluded, the group dissolved into small talk, and Miron showed the kids how she cartwheels. She added that the kids she was going to read to “frolicked to the blanket,” so she sat on the ground. “Sometimes it is good to touch grass.”

It was also Richard Sussman’s first time volunteering for LEAP. He chose a book called The Red Balloon by Albert Lamorisse, which Sussman said he liked as a child. The book follows a boy named Pascal, who befriends a sentient red balloon that follows him around.

“It was written in the 1950s and takes place in Paris, so we got to talk about other cultures and where [Paris] is and the FIFA games,” he said.

He said that the book was the perfect length, as the group finished with about five minutes to spare, which they used to talk about imaginary friends and writing stories.

Sussman also said he wished that he could have had the opportunity to get to know the kids better. “There is a great variation in interest and attentiveness and their ability to track the story,” he said. “If I knew the kids better, then I could’ve pulled the less engaged kids in.”

Josenyel, a rising third grader, in Sussman’s group, said that he liked the book as it was “kind of fun.”

Augusta Mueller, an employee at Yale New Haven Healthcare and a longtime supporter of LEAP, thought she was going to read to a group of 7 and 8 year old girls. So, she got copies of Stuck by Oliver Jeffers and Alma and How She Got Her Name by Juana Martinez-Neal from the library table.

Mueller said she chose to work with that age group because she is a “huge kid at heart.”

“I like to be silly,” she said. “They are a good age group; they still find me funny, older kids would just roll their eyes.

Mueller said she was hoping that the kids picked Alma and How She Got Her Name, saying, “I have an unusual first name, and I think it would be fun to share what our names are, and I can tell them I got mine, and they can say how they got theirs.” After the event, she said that everyone had really interesting names.

Mueller ended up working with a group of boys. “It is a lot different with boys,” she said. “I had to meet them where they're at and read the room. Having them introduce themselves and also having them pick the book helped me engage with them more. Giving them agency really helped."

Their group also ended up making paper airplanes, which was “totally fun,” according to Mueller. “At the end they were like ‘We’re going to sleep.’ then I said ‘Ok what do you want to do?’ Then they said, ‘Make paper airplanes.’ There was a page about planes and travel in the book, and that took off, pun intended, from there,” she said.

LEAP gave Mueller a bag, with a newsletter and a green slip of paper inside, both of which the kids fashioned into little airplanes. “Green slip was the fastest airplane, and it did loop-de-loops which was so cool,” she said.

This year's event comes as LEAP continues to grow its mission in a federal funding landscape that continues to change. This year, the organization’s annual budget is $6.9 million, a number that accounts from a reduction in government dollars from $1.3 million to $807,000. 

Private philanthropy covers 86 percent of revenue, according to a press packet sent out Friday. During the year, LEAP currently serves 1,800 kids across seven sites in Dixwell, Dwight-Kensington, the Hill, Fair Haven, Quinnipiac Meadows and Wooster Square.

This article comes from the ninth and current cohort of the Arts Council's Youth Arts Journalism Initiative (YAJI). From June 29 through August 21, YAJI students pitch, report, write and edit stories with Arts Paper Editor Lucy Gellman, Program Assistants Abiba Biao and Grayce Howe and Mentor Ruby Szekeres. Samir Iydroose is a rising junior at Hamden High School.