Challenge Met – 30 Minutes a Day, 30 Days

For the last month, Seeds challenged its students, staff, and tutors to read 30 minutes a day. The goal? Form a new habit and discover that reading is something you enjoy doing.

Throughout the month, students were encouraged to take free books from the Seeds shelves, read newspapers and magazines, and find new things that would interest them. Students were especially motivated when they learned that avid readers perform better on standardized tests, such as those for the high school equivalency. For students who still weren’t convinced reading would ever be something they’d want to do outside of the classroom, Seeds shared five ways to learn to love reading.

Students rose to the challenge, earning leaves with their names on them for every four days of participation (2 hours of reading). By the end of the month, participants would have spent 15.5 hours of reading each!

“It was important that they read DAILY,” site coordinator Kara Krawiec explained. “We had students exceed the half hour regularly.”

“The challenge reminded all of us to trade some of our daily social media time for a good book,” she said. “We encouraged each other to keep going.”

By the end of the challenge, Seeds East students achieved 74 leaves on their tree and Seeds West a whopping 88. Together, participants read for a grand total of 324 hours.

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KLK