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Event coincides with Read Across America Day

The annual Reading Rocks event at Crouch Elementary last Friday featured a little bit of everything.

Of course, there were plenty of books. After all, the event coincides with . There were snacks to make sure all the guest readers were fueled up before heading to classes.

And of course, there were guest readers from all across the Arlington area. New superintendent Dr. Matt Smith was there. So was 91��Ƭ�� Board of Trustees member Justin Chapa. Grand Prairie police chief Daniel Scesney also stopped by. And so did staff members from all across the 91��Ƭ��.

Crouch librarian Jo Ann Cottrell has turned the event into one of the places to be every year.

“This promotes a shared love of a reading experience for everyone in the school,” Cottrell said. “That’s what happens when you share that love.”

Smith’s first stop in sharing that love was first-grade teacher Zulema Quezada’s class. That’s where he read “Grumpy Monkey Party Time!” a book about managing social anxiety in the toughest of all settings – at a party with dancing. Smith then headed to a fifth-grade class to read “Flat Cat.”

Down the hall, Chapa was finishing “The Cool Bean” in Tsedenya Haile’s fourth-grade class. When the book was done, the real fun started. Once Chapa told the class he was a lawyer and asked if they had any questions, the questions did not stop.

“Have you met Judge Judy?” The answer was no, and then Chapa said what happens behind the scenes on a show like that.

“Have you been to the White House?” Yes, twice in fact.

“Do you get paid in thousands of dollars?” Yes, but not all lawyers make a lot of money.

And so on, and so on. And Chapa loved the interaction with the students.

“They had great questions,” he said.

It was that kind of day as the students learned a lot more than just what they heard in the books from the guests.

“We know education is the way for students to get what they want later in life,” Crouch principal Jaime Stephens told the group of readers before they ventured to their assignments. “Reading is a fundamental way to get them on that path. That’s what makes an event like this so special.”