WITS ROCHELLE LEE TEACHER AWARD

WITS ROCHELLE LEE TEACHER AWARD

The Rochelle Lee Teacher Award is a book grant for Chicago public and charter school elementary educators to enhance their classroom libraries and develop a love of reading in their students. Awardees will receive a grant of $500 in two allotments (fall, winter) to purchase books for their classroom library.

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Why classroom libraries are important

Educators agree that schools play an important role in expanding access to books at home, but many teachers have fewer than 150 books in their classroom libraries to serve all their students throughout the year—with 31% of teachers having fewer than fifty books.

According to the Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development - ASCD, Children who have robust classroom libraries are more likely to be frequent readers.

Surrounding students with books in the classroom helps them develop a sense of themselves as readers. Classroom libraries allow students to value their decision-making ability, giving them confidence and a feeling of ownership.

GET INVOLVED

Apply for a Rochelle Lee Teacher Award
Support this program with a donation.

RLTA RESOURCES: LIBRARY MATERIALS

Professional texts available to use in the RLTA library (select "professional texts" from drop-down menu). This resource is for RLTA awardees only.
Booksource’s Classroom Organizer is a free, online tool to catalog your classroom library books, create class check-out rosters, manage usage reports, and more. This resource is available for all teachers.

RLTA RESOURCES: Lending library

The Lending Library contains more than 350 sets of children and young adult books. Titles are available in whole class sets and smaller group sets. This resource is available for current and former Rochelle Lee Teacher Awardees.
View the Rochelle Lee Lending Library catalog and availability online via LibraryThing.
Lending Library/LibraryThing reference guide.
Contact Daphne Robinson in advance to borrow books from the lending library for your students. This will ensure that the desired books are available, and that a specific time can be scheduled to pick up the books.

program facilitators

Daphne Robinson

Daphne Robinson

Community Manager

daphner@witschicago.org
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Sarah Hoppe Knight

Chief Program & Strategy Officer

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