For about seven years, I volunteered as a tutor each Wednesday during the school year.   Chicago Lights Tutoring (www.chicagolights.org) provided one on one tutoring for several hundred young people each week. To help inspire my students to read I wrote plays – where the student not only read but performed — as the star of the play.  I wrote plays so a student could be the chef of a great restaurant, the pilot of a Boeing 737, a news anchor on NBC, or a doctor who sees ailing patients.  I have attached a few examples of plays (actual names of students are not used).  

Generic – WGN Talk  

Generic – This is Your Captain    

Generic – Farfalle

Plato in his classic work The Republic said “the direction in which education starts a person will determine their future life.”   Chicago Lights works diligently with students from the earliest grades through high school and is making a significant difference in the lives of thousands of young people.  There are few more fitting legacies – for each one of us – than to quietly inspire the education of young people and to foster an appreciation for learning.  W.B. Yeats once said “Education is not a pail to fill but a fire to light. . . .”  Are you interested in lighting some educational fires? Check your local tutoring opportunities or – if you are in Chicago – check out Chicago Lights.  You will not be disappointed.