The children huddled around 23-year-old Danny O'Rourke from the San Jose Earthquakes as he read from Froggy Plays Soccer , by Jonathan London.

O'Rourke helped jumpstart the school's "Get a Kick Out of Reading" program. The program is a literacy initiative sponsored by Major League Soccer, the National Education Association and America SCORES.

"This is an incentive for the kids to have fun reading with their families at homes," said Tatum, who enrolled her classes in the program.

"For some of these kids, this will be the closest they will come to meeting a professional soccer player in their life," she said. "This is special to them."

The children all lined up for autographs from the young soccer player. He signed team photos, soccer balls as well as T-shirts and even their backpacks.

"I love working with the kids," O'Rourke said. "I try to do whatever I can. It's just fun. I wish I had soccer players coming to my school when I was younger."

O'Rourke has been playing soccer for 18 years and was recently drafted by the Earthquakes. This was his first time participating in the program.

"We like to spread the love with the other players," he said. "So everyone gets a chance to interact with the kids."

The literacy initiative is a four-week program that encourages students to read an extra 90 minutes a week. The children are given a sheet that their parents sign when the students have completed the 90 minutes each week.

"The children agreed to do it," Tatum said. "We were one of the first classes among 25 schools in the district that signed up for this challenge."

Tatum said she has 20 third-graders and 10 fourth-graders involved with the program. Every student is part of the Academic Language Acquisition classes. This is the third year for the program.

It uses soccer to spread positive messages about the value of reading with the family. It is a bilingual program and targets youth and teenagers in grades K-12.

For more information, visit www.getakickoutofreading.org