Richard Roeper Blog

A few pics from the annual Aces Up! tournament, held at the Wit Hotel in Chicago last week. We raised more than $100,000 for the Urban Prep academies.

www.urbanprep.org

Your hosts for the evening: Ill. State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias, Urban Prep’s Tim King, RR, and former Chicago Bear and Notre Damer Chris Zorich.

Former Chicago Bear (and avid poker player) Jerry Azumah apparently believes if you sing to your cards, they’ll improve…

After knocking a guy out of the tournament, I tell him, “Good game, you played well, I got lucky, yada yada yada…”

I don’t know what’s happening here, but I’m fairly certain it’s not a standard part of any Hold ‘em tournament.

With Susan Carlson of CBS-2 and Natalie Martinez of NBC-5.

Illinois State Treasurer (and U.S. Senate candidate) Alexi Giannoulias.

On Tuesday morning, it was my privilege to participate in a very cool thing: OfficeMax’s “A Day Made Better” national teacher appreciation event.

Here’s the deal. If you’re a teacher, or you have a friend or relative who’s a teacher, you probably already know that nearly every teacher in the country regularly dips into personal funds to buy teaching supplies. A friend of mine who taught for years in the Chicago Public School system was always running out to the store to buy supplies, or hitting up friends for anything and everything that could be put to use in a classroom.

On average, a teacher spends about $1,200 a year in personal funds on classroom supplies. In recognition of the extraordinary efforts put forth every day by thousands of teachers across the country, OfficeMax has a day in which 1,000 teachers each receive surprise deliveries of $1,000 in school supplies.

A number of celebrities participate in the event, including Selena Gomez in Los Angeles.

In Chicago, I was part of the team making a surprise visit to the teachers and pre-K students at Goethe Elementary in the Bucktown neighborhood. The kids were adorable, the teachers were thrilled—-and they’re already using the supplies found in that giant box.

What a great day.