The Beanstack program encourages students and teachers to read more by offering incentives for logging reading time online. Students can earn prizes based off of their reading logs.
“The goal would be to increase our reading statistics, which will ultimately help our literacy levels,” Lisa Marcum, head librarian and initiator of the program, said.
“According to the Illinois Report card, in 2019, we had 38.1% of students meet or exceed on their ELA portion of the SAT. Last year, we had only 32.9%. We’ve gone up since 2021 (the first year since COVID), but we still haven’t gotten back to our pre-pandemic reading levels,” Marcum said.
This program aims to encourage students to read more, possibly for prizes, which would need to be funded by donations. Students would log reading hours into a website to be verified, and whoever reads a certain number of minutes will be rewarded.
Other students participate for fun rather than reading improvement.
“I’ve really seen no improvement in reading hours, to be honest, because I read frequently anyway, but it can help if people are having issues with reading in English,” freshman Margarita Maras, book club member and program participant, said. This program has been assisting students with reading and English with the practice provided.
“It helped me read the Catcher in the Rye for AP literature,” senior Kaitlyn Vidmar, book club member, said. “It essentially helps me focus on it so I can read it uninterrupted.”
Those who want to donate or volunteer should contact or see Marcum in the library. The prizes for this program depend on what or how much has been donated to the program.
