It was a chilly Wednesday morning in Eastside Santa Barbara, but Franklin School 3rd-grade teacher Leon Lewandowski’s classroom was warm and toasty as the kids gathered around the virtual hearth (a YouTube video of a crackling fire playing on the classroom’s wall-mounted television) curled up in a sea of blankets and plushy pillows to enjoy a cozy pajama-clad read-in for Scholastic’s 13th Annual Great Bedtime Story Pajama Drive.
Each year, schools across the country participate in the drive run by Scholastic Book Clubs and Pajama Program. In the 12 years since the event started, the drives have collected and distributed more than 850,000 pairs of pajamas and 1.25 million books.
At Franklin Elementary, a Title 1 school which serves a majority of low-income students, Lewandowski began participating in 2018, asking students and their families to donate sets of pajamas toward children and families in need. To celebrate, the children show up to school in their own pajamas, clear all the desks, and get comfortable for a morning read-in.