MATTOON, Ill. (AP) - L.T. Spears enjoys reading, however, it was his competitive edge that drove him to scan his fingers across 4,015 braille pages for a multi-state Braille reading contest earlier this year.
The Mattoon Middle School seventh-grader read numerous Braille-translated books with a few magazines sprinkled in to secure the top spot in the Great Lakes Braille Readers Are Leaders contest.
The contest spans eight states: Minnesota, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York. And of the contestants involved, Spears not only took the top spot in his middle-school grade category, but he read the most pages out of all of those in the contest spanning 13 grade levels.
L.T. said despite his efforts to read as many books as possible, he was still nervous when he got the call after the reading period ended.
“I thought (Lisa McDaniel) was joking,” he said, describing the phone call he had with McDaniel, the EIASE teacher who tracked his pages.
L.T., a visually impaired student with Eastern Illinois Area Special Education (EIASE), has competed in the contest in years prior, managing to add 1,000 more pages each year, however, last year, he was just shy of nabbing first place.
L.T. read just a smidgen less than a competitor from Minnesota. Before this year’s contest started, he was determined it would be different.
“Every year after the first year we will sit down before the contest and get a goal in mind of how many pages he would like to read, and he has always met and exceeded his goal every time,” McDaniel said.
Usually, his goal is a page count, but this year was more focused. This year he was going to surpass the student in Minnesota.
“I just said I wanted to beat him,” L.T. said.
The game plan was simple.
“I was just making sure I was reading a bunch of pages, as much as I could,” he said.
By the end of the contest, he said, he read around 50 books.
Throughout those seven weeks, L.T. managed to glide through all of the pages of the Michael Vey series, much of the Series of Unfortunate Events books and other books he came across like “The War that Saved my Life” by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley.
He stuck to the fiction he prefers that has a substantial amount of comedy and action. He mentioned any book with mystery or suspense often caught his attention as well.
The contest was not only a way to compete, though. Beyond the competition, L.T. said he loves to read. He just does not read as fervently outside of the contest.
He developed his love of books and reading in general from his mother, Gina Spears, who is blind and also an avid reader in Braille. L.T. said he found a love of books through her.
Gina Spears said she loves reading and L.T. just picked it up from her. She added it is a “close connection” the two have together. So, when he got the call that he surpassed everyone in the contest as well as in his category, Gina Spears said she was very proud.
“I was ecstatic,” she said.
L.T. plans to read 5,000 pages next year, hoping to keep his streak going.
In another Braille contest, the Braille Challenge, this one specific to literacy skills, L.T. took first place in the junior varsity bracket for middle-schoolers. Two others apart of EIASE, Olivia Rios and Sidney Horn, competed as well. Olivia took first place in the apprentice bracket for second-graders.
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Source: Journal Gazette & Times-Courier, https://bit.ly/2lUZylx
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Information from: Mattoon Journal-Gazette, https://www.jg-tc.com
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