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A year’s worth of hard work had led to this moment. Multiple sessions with reading interventionists, such as fellow bus passenger Michelle Branham, had honed her and her classmates’ reading skills. Success in those one-on-one sessions became success in the classroom and a ticket to this event.
Now, at the end of the school year, she and her fellow first graders waited as buses from other schools parked. More than 250 students from school districts across the state — districts in Pickens, Anderson, Oconee and Chesterfield counties, to name a few — disembarked to join her in a long line in front of the large garage doors to the field.
One of them opened to a wall of music and a sea of orange.
Along both sides of the door, lines of Clemson cheerleaders, Rally Cats and Tiger Band members celebrated the students’ arrival, playing “Tiger Rag” and dancing as the young students walked with their eyes wide to the center of the field. The Tiger mascot was there, competing with Clifford the Big Red Dog for the children’s attention. At the center of the field, Clemson faculty and staff, along with Kathleen Swinney, wife of Clemson Football head coach Dabo Swinney, and several Clemson Football players, waited to greet the students.
All this pomp and circumstance was over the top by design. Every student in attendance had earned their ticket to the Tigers Read! event by making great strides in reading after initial struggles. The event, held in May as far back as 2016, is meant to close out the school year on a high note and send students into summer with a bag full of books and the enthusiasm for reading to go with it When DeLeon attended this event several years ago, she and her classmates sat cross-legged to hear some of their favorite Clemson Football players read We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, a book about a family’s puzzling decision to find and then run from a bear. In true children’s book form, the bear also seems confused by the plot.
Teachers, reading interventionists, the dean of the College of Education, and Clemson faculty and staff framed the seated children and were also a captive audience. Branham, who has attended multiple Tigers Read! events, recalls enjoying the comedic effect of a hulking linebacker reading, “We’re going to catch a big one. … We’re not scared” in a soft, hesitant tone as if he were a nervous child sharing a secret with the students.
The students remained completely engaged, hanging on every word and sitting in awe as athletes they’ve seen perform amazing physical feats read the type of book they see daily at school. Think Reading Rainbow hosted by gentle giants.
“When I think back on it, it was so fun to sit and listen to people from Clemson read to us, and we got a bag of books, and then we had a picnic,” DeLeon, now a fourth grader, says. “I read the books a lot that summer, too.”
C.C. Bates, who serves as associate dean for research and graduate studies in the College of Education and director of the Early Literacy Center for South Carolina, says Tigers Read! has been one of the highlights of her year for almost a decade now. What started as a small gathering of a few students in the West End Zone has turned into a chaotic, whirlwind event that she and her fellow educators enjoy getting caught up in for a few fast-paced hours each year.
The event is an exclamation point at the end of an academic year before educators lose touch with students. It’s a lofty goal, but one that Early Literacy Center for South Carolina faculty working with school districts in the state pursued because they know the value of maintaining reading momentum during the summer.
