Lake Forest Country Day School Reaches out to Neighboring School during “Read with Me” Buddy Day

On Tuesday morning, an unfamiliar scene occurred at Lake Forest Country Day School: A yellow school bus slowly rolled to a stop in front of the main entrance. What followed next was an all too familiar scene at LFCDS: children entering one by one into the main entrance with bright smiles and eager expressions. However, the children that exited that bright yellow bus and walked across the fresh fallen snow entered the school not as LFCDS students, but as Forrestal Elementary School students who traveled from North Chicago to visit their Lake Forest pals for a “Read with Me” Buddy Day.  

As part of an effort to partner with neighboring schools in the area, LFCDS began working with North Chicago Community Partners and Forrestal Elementary School with the intention of fostering greater inter-school faculty and student interaction. The offshoot of this partnership was the institution of a year-long, collaborative “buddy system” between LFCDS fourth-grade students and Forrestal third-grade students, which has involved visits back and forth between the two schools.

Tuesday marked the final meeting of the year for the fourth- and third-grade friends, which composed of various group reading activities, a communal snack and chat, and a fun bingo session. Previous to this event, the Forrestal students visited LFCDS to initiate the interaction, and the LFCDS fourth-grade students visited Forrestal once. Just like the previous two meetings between equally excited groups of students, this past Tuesday’s “Read with Me” Buddy day involved scores of genuinely engaged conversation, laughter, student-led teaching and advice, mentoring, and overall, friendship.

According to LFCDS fourth-grade teacher Paul Hedlund, “The Reading Buddy program brings together children who would not likely know each together. Children come to realize that even though they might come from a different city and attend a different school, they are alike in many ways.” While it may be true that the two schools are separated by more than five miles distance, the students from two different communities easily found common ground on diverse topics ranging from similarly identified character traits in their books to more tangential topics such as Rihanna, PlayStation 4, and ninjas.

Another great benefit from such shared experiences as the “Read with Me” Buddy Day is the interaction and educational diffusion that takes place between the teachers. On more than one occasion, teachers from both LFCDS and Forrestal could be seen not only smiling and joking like the students surrounding them, but also engaging in more serious discussions on teaching methods and lessons.

While this jovial event marked the last interactive day between the Forrestal and LFCDS buddies for the rest of the school year, LFCDS has decided to extend such opportunities to the Upper School as part of a new initiative called the Innovation Outreach Program. The purpose of the educational outreach program is to create partnership opportunities between students and teachers from neighboring schools to engage them in innovative science technology engineering and math (STEM) lessons. Potential neighboring communities for this program include North Chicago and Waukegan. The idea behind this wonderful program involved allowing under-resourced communities to access LFCDS’ new innovation lab and to engage in a truly interactive and fun science and math experience.

Although the benefits of this program remain to be seen, the level of connectedness and joy that was palpable in Tuesday’s “Read with Me” Buddy Day is a sure sign that the Innovation Outreach Program will share similar success. LFCDS has always strived to foster globally aware citizens, and opportunities such as the “Read with Me” day allow these students to build their awareness base at the local level. Such transfusion of knowledge across different communities only fosters more robust social skills and better prepares children from both schools for the world outside of their intra school communities.