These Parents Fought for a Better Education for Their Kids — and Won

The immigrant students in Stamford, Connecticut, were thriving. In grade schools across the midsize city, where roughly 35% of residents are foreign-born, these non-native English speakers would routinely receive rows of As and Bs on their report cards. They’d come home with high marks and exclamation points scribbled in red ink.
But when those same students took the state’s standardized achievement test, the opposite was true. The immigrant students, it turned out, were far behind the national reading level. 
When parents across the school district learned that their children were lagging in reading proficiency, they decided to do something. They looked to their neighbors in nearby Norwalk, where families had been participating in a literacy initiative called Springboard Collaborative since 2018. The Stamford parents had heard about the success of the program, which invites families into the classroom for workshops on how to boost their kids’ reading skills, and decided to push for it to be brought to Stamford schools, too. 
Besides immigrant students, children from low-income families also suffer from a literacy gap. When school isn’t in session, these students fall behind even more. By the time they reach the end of fifth grade, this “summer slide” can put disadvantaged kids three years behind their peers in reading level. What’s more, if these students aren’t reading at the recommended level by fourth grade, they’re 13 times more likely to drop out of high school. 
To help bridge that divide, Springboard Collaborative brings teachers and parents together to instill better reading habits in their children. The program, which is free for families and paid for by the school district and private donors, holds sessions both in the summer and during the school year. Through teacher-led workshops, parents are trained to be effective reading coaches for their kids, who are rewarded for their progress.
“You think the school is doing right by your kid, and you think your kid is doing fine and getting good grades. But the reality is that the grades are distributed on a bell curve,” founder and CEO Alejandro Gibes de Gac, a former first-grade teacher who himself immigrated to the United States as a student told NationSwell. [Editor’s note: Gibes de Gac is a member of the NationSwell Council.] “A kid might get an A in a low-income school, and they might be doing better than others in their classroom, but it may also be true that they’re far behind their higher-income peers.”
Since launching in 2012, Springboard, currently available in over 65 schools, has seen impressive improvements in students’ reading skills — and has the data to back it up. Instead of the usual three-month regression most kids experience during a summer break, participants in Springboard’s 2018 summer program actually gained a six-month advantage in reading skills.
That data is what pushed Stamford parent Jenny Canepa to get on board. 
Last fall, Canepa and like-minded parents came together to brainstorm ways to get Springboard to come to their district. They organized assemblies to educate the community on the literacy gap, and Canepa spent weekends at grocery stores, laundromats and bus stops talking to parents. Others canvassed neighborhoods collecting signatures; in two weeks, nearly 200 people had signed a petition in favor of Springboard.
The Stamford parents, with the support of Gibes de Gac, presented the petition to the superintendent that November and, finally, to the Board of Education in May.
The board meeting dragged on for hours until members voted on the proposal. Gibes de Gac could feel the tension in the room. “We could tell from the tenor of the conversation and the nature of the debate that it was likely going to fail.” Besides, the school district had a tight budget.  
At 11 p.m. on a Tuesday, the school board approved of the $150,000 contract by a narrow 5-to-4 vote. 
The room erupted, Gibes de Gac said. District leaders and families cried, smiled and cheered. “It was a culmination of many years of sacrifice and of feeling overlooked,” Gibes de Gac said. “To be in a position where your advocacy moves a system that can so easily overlook low-income families, it meant a great deal to them.”

Stamford families celebrate after the school board passed Springboard Collaborative’s proposal.

The contract will provide literacy coaching to 240 students and families across the district, where about 9% of residents live below the poverty line. Schools will select the students most in need of reading support, and any remaining spots will be offered to the families who were most active in the campaign to bring Springboard to Stamford.
The Canepas won’t be one of them, though. While Canepa has a 13-year-old son, Springboard is targeted to younger students, from pre-K to third grade. But that didn’t matter to her.
“We’re not only fighting for our kids. We’re fighting for the kids in the community,” she told NationSwell. “So the people who are going to attend this program are the people who are in most need.”
For Canepa, supporting families who may not know what resources and services are available to them is personal. In 2001, she emigrated from Ecuador with her 14-year-old daughter. She described the challenge of learning a new language and a new education system. She had her son, Maximillian, a few years later and when he was diagnosed with a speech delay, she knew she had to speak up for herself and her children. Canepa took classes in English and joined a network of immigrant families where she learned her rights as a parent. Since then, she’s been a leader in her community.
“Now I have a voice, I have a right, and I can use it,” she said. “This is just the beginning.”
Canepa isn’t the only one speaking out on behalf of Stamford’s children, regardless of whether they qualify for Springboard. One grandparent, she said, joined the effort just so his 8-month-old granddaughter would have better opportunities when she reaches elementary school.  
The group of immigrant families spent months lobbying for the district to bring Springboard Collaborative to their schools.

“Growing up with little money but lots of ambition taught me that parents’ love for their children is the single greatest and most underutilized resource we have in education,” said Gibes de Gac.
Currently his nonprofit works with over 10,000 students in 13 cities. But what makes the situation in Stamford unusual is that the families pitched the school board, not Gibes de Gac. To help them prepare, he taught the parents Springboard’s sales playbook.
“It was maybe the proudest that I’ve felt in the last seven years of building Springboard,” he said. “It reminded me that the implications of our work go far beyond even just literacy outcomes.”
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Kids Are Learning to Read in a Place You’d Never Expect: The Laundromat

Green Eggs and Ham while your laundry soaks? Goodnight Moon during the spin cycle?
Laundry and literacy may sound like odd bedfellows, but what better place to reach parents with young kids than at the laundromat?
Combining laundry time and storytime is not a new concept, but the Laundry and Literacy Coalition — a recent partnership between the LaundryCares Foundation, Libraries Without Borders and the Clinton Foundation’s Too Small to Fail initiative — is taking it a step further, piloting a project to install literacy spaces for kids under 6 years of age in 600 laundromats by 2020. It’s a joint effort to make early literacy programs available to underserved communities via laundromats nationwide.
Laundromats provide a captive audience for the time it takes to wash, dry and fold clothes, typically at least two hours, Libraries Without Borders Executive Director Adam Echelman told American Libraries magazine. Beyond that, families typically do laundry on a weekly basis. So while parents pour detergent and fold soccer uniforms, their kids have an opportunity to work on their reading skills. Participating laundromats can provide children with services like librarian-helmed reading stations, educational computer games, puzzles and sing-alongs — all free for families. The Laundry and Literacy Coalition is also building a network of nonprofit organizations, academics, foundations, corporations and laundromat owners to help scale strategies and advance research around early literacy in laundromats.

wash and read
A Brooklyn laundromat that’s been upgraded with a reading nook.

“You have a captive audience, families return weekly, and it’s open all the time,” said Echelman. “Another thing is that most people don’t go to a laundromat outside of their neighborhood, so you’re working really locally.”
The national nonprofit Libraries Without Borders promotes literacy to low-income neighborhoods through pop-up bookshelves at places like bus stops, subway stations and public parks. But one pop-up gained a lot more traction than the rest. Why? It was next to a laundromat.
The goal of Laundry and Literacy is to close the literacy gap between low-income and higher-income students, with a focus on kindergarten readiness. In 2016, only one out of five low-income students read proficiently by fourth grade in the United States, and students who cannot read proficiently by the end of third grade very rarely catch up in later grades, according to a report by Business Roundtable. Studies show that lower rates of literacy are linked to poverty and crime.
Although the goal is the same — to get young kids reading — each laundromat’s learning space can vary. Depending on the partnering programs, amenities can vary from shelves filled with books, or full-fledged reading nooks with laptops, games and educational materials. Each space is dependent on funding from nonprofits and other organizations. The current reading nooks have been funded by the coalition, but the groups hope to convince laundromat owners to help fund future reading spaces, which cost around $1,500 to $2,500 a year to maintain.
“Our goal as a coalition is to be working in every laundromat in the country,” Echelman said.
Populous cities like Washington, D.C., Pittsburgh and Detroit, as well as smaller cities like Winslow, Arizona, and Kamiah, Idaho, all have adopted reading time in the laundromat.
Last year, the Chicago Public Library launched Laundromat Story Time in 14 laundromats across some of Chicago’s lower-income neighborhoods. In Chicago, more than 60 percent of the city’s low-income households don’t have children’s books and four in 10 public school students don’t meet or exceed reading standards, according to the Chicago Literacy Alliance.
“We’re always looking at new ways of reaching our intended audiences,” Brian Bannon, commissioner and CEO of the Chicago Public Library, told USNews. “The laundromat turned out to be one of them.”
Hundreds of miles away in Queens, New York, children are participating in a similar literacy program through Queens Library and Laundry and Literacy. At Lavanderia Express XI, children have access to comfy couches, toys and books in English and Spanish.
“I think the goal of this space, too, is to make sure that kids’ time in laundromats is being used to do creative things or to learn and to give families time to interact with each other,” Queens Library outreach assistant Hal Schrieve told NPR.
Beyond making a weekly chore fun, laundry literacy programs have proven to be effective. The Laundry and Literacy Coalition worked with Susan Neuman, a professor of childhood and literacy education at New York University, to evaluate the effectiveness of the program. The evaluation, which was conducted in 2018 at six New York laundromats, found that children who interacted with literacy laundromats spent an average of 47 minutes per visit doing literacy-based activities and were more likely to engage in reading than those children who didn’t have a laundromat literacy program. Neuman said programs like this can be successful in “book deserts,” which are communities that lack access to books, much like so-called food deserts. Book deserts have been linked to income segregation, meaning that the poorer the child is, the less likely he or she will have access to a library or place to access reading materials.
“Small moments and interactions really help prepare children for success in school,” Jane Park Woo, deputy director of Too Small to Fail, told the Chicago Tribune. “We’re very focused on meeting families where they are and helping them make the most of their small moments … we want to help parents use all these moments to engage in language-rich interaction with their children.”
More: This Exciting Program Moves Struggling Students to the Head of the Class

This Man Was Born Blind, But That Doesn’t Stop Him From Teaching Children to Read

In Charlotte, NC, four out of 10 students aren’t reading at grade level. This setback has contributed to a poor high school exit rate: One third of students won’t graduate on time, or at all.
In an effort to improve literacy rates, the local YMCAs have established the Y Readers Program to help the city’s youngest readers overcome their learning obstacles and improve their self-confidence. The program works because of its team of dedicated volunteer tutors, including one in particular: Jeff Balek, a man who also has a major obstacle. He can’t see.
MORE: The Blind Teacher Who Has Vision Like No Other
As Good News Networkreports, even though Balek has been blind since birth, that doesn’t stop him from teaching his second and third graders how to read.
“When the kids find out I’m blind, they ask me all kinds of questions,” he says in the inspiring video below. “I think they get a good kick out of it.”
How does he do it?
As his students read the words printed on the page, Balek follows along in Braille. When his students stumble on a word, he is able to help them figure out the pronunciation.
“I love seeing the kids progress,” Balek says.
And without a hint of irony, he adds, “I get inspired because I see them overcoming their obstacles.”
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Meet the Group That Helps Kids Turn the Page Toward a Better Future

By reading his words, Dr. Seuss taught us about all of the places we will go. Opening a book and falling into the pages transports you to a new land with new adventures — whether it is eating green eggs and ham or meeting the Cat in the Hat.
But for some kids, reading is much more than just a trip down imagination lane; it is the pathway to a more successful life. And that’s the mission of the Children’s Literacy Foundation (CLiF): to show kids in low-income communities the opportunities that reading can provide them.
Since 1998, CLiF has been serving low-income, at-risk and rural children in Vermont and New Hampshire.  Through partnerships with schools, libraries, shelters and other organizations, the group works to inspire the love of writing and reading in children ranging from birth to age 12.
So how do they encourage passion for the written word? The Foundation hosts events throughout various communities featuring a published author who gives an inspirational presentation on his or her life, tell stories and conduct a writing workshop with the kids.
Further, CLiF donates books to schools, libraries and kids themselves, as well as works with the community to create a more literary-friendly environment.
It all began 16 years ago when Duncan McDougall founded the organization with one staff member (himself) and one program.  Now, CLiF boasts a staff of five as well as 50 professional presenters.
Over the years, they’ve given away $3 million worth of books, and worked with more than 160,000 kids across 400 communities.
They’ve also added a new program that allows CLiF to interact with kids throughout the entire year. Children have the opportunity to participate in at least 12 activities and get their own personal collection of new books.
And just because school is out during the summer, that doesn’t mean that the CLiF stops working. CLiF also coordinates its Summer Readers Program, reaching 3,700 kids in over 50 summer camps, childcare centers, libraries and recreation programs in low-income areas.
Why the focus on children from low-income areas? Because, perhaps not surprisingly, they’re the ones most at risk for low literacy rates. CLiF chooses communities that contain a high number of kids on the free or reduced lunch program or have a high number of below proficient scores in reading and writing on standardized tests.
The kids that live in these areas are often the children of inmates, recent refugees, or simply don’t have access to enrichment activities because they live in rural areas.
For kids of prison inmates, this program gives both parent and child a chance for a better life. CLiF offers a program where inmates (70 percent of them have poor literacy) can record themselves reading a book and then send that recording to their children.
For one inmate in New Hampshire, CLiF seminars changed the way he viewed reading.
“I am not able to be there and actually read them books,” he told CLiF. “Since I started attending [the CLiF seminars] we have started storytelling at night on the phone. Either I will tell one or they may but there is always a story.”
While some may consider this to be mission impossible, CLiF isn’t going giving up. After all, for some kids, counting one fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish is the key to success.
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This Is the Most Adorable Way Ever to Get Kids to Read

Are you ready for a ridiculous amount of cuteness? The Animal Rescue League of Berks County in Pennsylvania hosts a program that lets kids ages 6-13 to read books to homeless animals. The “Book Buddies” program allows kids to practice reading to an nonjudgmental listener, while rescue cats are given much-needed affection. Kids are given small prizes once they complete a certain amount of books.
“The program will help children improve their reading skills while also helping the shelter animals,” according to the shelter’s website.” Cats find the rhythmic sound of a voice very comforting and soothing.” Indeed, if you take a look at the shelter’s delightful Facebook photos, it looks like the animals quite enjoy Dr. Seuss.
MORE: This 11-Year-Old Does More to Help Animals Before School Than Most of Us Do in a Lifetime
According to Time, the program began in August 2013 after the shelter’s director, Kristi Rodriguez, had her 10-year-old son Sean read to a cat to help improve his reading skills. But it wasn’t until earlier this month when a photo of a young boy nuzzling an orange tabby with a picture book was posted on Reddit that word really got out about the animal shelter.
The shelter was reportedly flooded with donations and interest from all over the world. “The response is mind-boggling. I’ve heard from people in Canada and a newspaper in Taiwan. People are calling with questions like, ‘Do you know if there’s a similar program in Omaha, Nebraska? I’ve been contacted by ‘Good Morning America,'” Rodriguez told SFGate. “The phone is ringing off the hook.”