 One of my favorite questions to be asked is, “What are you reading?” I get excited discussing books with my friends and sharing my recent finds from the shelves of the library, or my local book seller.
I belong to a book group filled with women who share this passion and like many groups, we gather bi-monthly to discuss, dissect and robustly debate the qualities of the current tale on our list. I can’t imagine my life without the ability to escape into a book and talk about it, or even further, to catch up on the Virginian Pilot, or to read a manual (sometimes), or a sign, or map, or the directions on a recipe, or more critically, a bottle of hair dye.
The list goes on about how inhibited by life I would be if I were not given the gift of reading and from my perspective; this gift was also a privilege due to the luck of my life circumstances.
Now, through Reading Enriches All Children (REACH), I work with a team of amazing staff and volunteers to promote a passion for reading in others who are not given the same privileges and for whom reading can mean the difference of a life of bad choices and fractured homes, or a way out of poverty toward a brighter future.
The goal of REACH is to take kids who live in homeless and domestic violence shelters whose lives have been broken by poverty and violence and broaden their horizons through literature during a rousing story time called a Read-Aloud one night week, every week at each shelter.
We also work with parents to teach the importance of creating a literacy rich home environment and the powerful bonding and skill building that a read-aloud time can bring to their family-even in a time of crisis.
We teach not only is reading-aloud fun, it also promotes positive communication between parents and children. It is this communication that can be crucial for keeping their children out of trouble down the road and increase the opportunities toward a stable future for their family and future generations breaking the cycle of poverty they find themselves in.
The following is taken from The Read-Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease. (It is treasury of information about reading-aloud for all caregivers, families and classrooms. It is filled with lists of amazing read-aloud books that every parent, teacher, librarian and caregiver should own).
Language is the basic ingredient of school and community success and nothing nurtures language skills as well as reading-aloud to a child-regardless of income or a parent’s education level.
1. The more you read, the more you know.
2. The more you know, the smarter you grow.
3. The smarter you are, the longer you stay in school.
4. The longer you stay in school, the more diplomas you earn and the longer you are employed— thus the more money you earn in a lifetime.
The opposite will also be true:
1. The less you read, the less you know.
2. The less you know, the more likely you’ll drop out of school.
3. The sooner you drop out; the sooner and longer you are poor.
4. The sooner you drop out, the greater your chances of going to jail.
Poverty and illiteracy are related—they are the parents of desperation and imprisonment.
• 30 percent of federal inmates, 40 percent of state prison inmates, and 50 percent of persons on death row are high school dropouts (data from 1997 and 1998; U.S. Department of Justice 2000, 2002)
• 85 percent of juvenile offenders have problems reading (data from National Institute for Literacy)
• 70 percent of prisoners fall into the lowest two levels of reading proficiency. (data from National Institute for Literacy)
The connection is simple: If they can’t read well enough to do the work, day-in and day-out, the child meets frustration and failure in every classroom. Since there’s a strong connection between reading and graduation and prison (the less you know, the more you think you won’t get caught), if you change the reading ability you’ll also change the prison population—which changes the social climate in a big way.
Reading-Aloud is the foundation of building a positive future by creating a lifelong love of reading. Parents and teachers do not need to teach children to read, they can simply teach them to love reading by sharing stories out loud as often as possible, or even just for fifteen minutes each night. By reading-aloud they create readers and might possible change the world!
If you feel compelled to Change the World as a member of a Read-Aloud Team here in Hampton Roads, call REACH at 757-627-4722 or visit us at www.reachreads.org.
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