This following blog post is a transcript of Storyshares founder and CEO Louise Baigelman's TEDxBostonCollege Talk. Watch the TEDx Talk here.
In the fall of 2009, an 11-year-old girl started her first day of middle school just north of here, in Lynn, Massachusetts. She had recently moved to the United States from Haiti.
In her short time in the US, she had developed strong verbal communication skills in English. But when it came to reading, she had fallen behind.
And let’s face it, life as a middle schooler can be challenging under the best of circumstances. But imagine starting 6th grade while only being able to read at around a 1st grade level. And imagine your teacher hands you Hop on Pop because you can’t read the stories written for kids your age – the books you might be interested in reading.
This girl was my student, Ruth.
Ruth was clever, brilliant, and wise beyond her years. In many ways, she was like any other teenager. But when she arrived in my classroom at KIPP Academy Lynn, her literacy skills were holding her back.
They impacted her ability to succeed across all subject areas… Preventing her from solving word problems in math class, or reading her textbook in social studies class. And they impacted her self-esteem: making her feel embarrassed, unmotivated, insecure.
As a young, new teacher, I learned an important early lesson that year. This was not a Ruth problem.
Many of my middle school students could not read.
I knew my most important job was giving Ruth and her peers the ability to read… so that they could read to learn. And I knew that they needed to practice reading, in order to improve. But the books written at a first grade reading level were, of course, written for first graders. So Ruth and her friends would not read books like, “My Fluffy Bunny.” In 6th grade, would you?
No matter where I looked, I could not find choices to offer my students that were relatable, representative, intriguing; books they could read and wanted to read.
And as it turned out, this was not a KIPP Academy or a Lynn, Massachusetts problem either.
The most recent Nation’s Report card came out last month, showing that literacy rates in the US are still declining: 69% of today’s 4th graders and 71% of today’s 8th graders are behind in reading. This means that 2 out of every 3 students do not have the skills they need to access text: something that is required in every middle school and high school classroom, and in their daily lives. Think about all the times you’ve used reading in just the past 24 hours. Maybe you went out to dinner last night, and you had to read the menu to choose what you wanted to order. Or maybe this morning you were finishing your taxes, and you had to read the instructions on the form so that you could complete it accurately. Reading is fundamental across so much of what we do every single day.
So with 130 million teens and adults in the US unable to read, we are in the midst of a national – and global – literacy crisis. With far-reaching effects across just about every area of life.
The first question we need to ask ourselves is this: What’s being done about it?
In recent years, there has been a powerful movement in the world of literacy instruction. There was a discovery: We were teaching reading incorrectly for decades, using programs and strategies that were proven to be ineffective. This movement, referred to as ‘The Science of Reading’ became a nation-wide, and even international, call to action for revamping literacy instruction – across schools, teacher training programs, and state-wide policies. The result has been inspiring: entire approaches are being removed and replaced by new evidence-based programs and models.
Within this movement, there is focus, and a sense of urgency, around a singular goal: grade level reading by 3rd grade. Because we know that once students leave 3rd grade, if they can’t read proficiently, their life outcomes look different. They are 4X less likely to graduate high school, and 6X more likely to end up in prison, or on welfare.
In a recent episode of Sold a Story, the podcast that in many ways inspired the birth of this movement, they said this:
“You may be worrying about high school, but if those kids aren't reading by third grade, then you've lost them. You have to do that early part really well.”
And yet, approximately 70% of 4th and 8th graders TODAY, aren’t reading proficiently. If we adhere to this thinking, that we’ve ‘lost them’ at third grade, when they’re a mere 9 years old, we will never reverse this trend. And we will be giving up on tens of millions of students, who are unlucky enough to have already gotten past that point. We will perpetuate the cycle of illiteracy.
The good news is that school does not end in 3rd grade. And literacy instruction does not need to either.
So here is the other key question, one that we must be asking: what are doing to support those millions of students who have moved past 3rd grade, and still can’t read?
These students are not lost. We can still make them readers. Their lives are not ruined. We just must think about it differently.
In a recent episode of Sold a Story, the podcast that in many ways inspired the birth of this movement, they said this:
“You may be worrying about high school, but if those kids aren't reading by third grade, then you've lost them. You have to do that early part really well.”
So, why do we, as a society, want to double down on early literacy, at the expense of addressing literacy for older students? The answer is both complex, and simple: this is when we have always taught reading. Students ‘typically’ learn how to read in kindergarten through 3rd grade. The teachers, in these grades, are trained to teach early reading skills. The books that publishers make for beginning readers, are made for early elementary students. We have operated for so long on the assumption that you learn to read in grades K-3, and then by 4th grade, you KNOW how to read, so at that point, you can read to learn.
Meaning, instead of figuring out how to sound out letters and string them together fluently, and make meaning of them to understand a story or a text, you can USE these inherent skills to access new content: identifying the key themes of a novel in your 9th grade English class, comparing different types of rocks in 6th grade science class, or analyzing the historical events that led to a war in 12th grade history.
Even when we know that 2 out of 3 students in 5th grade or 9th grade cannot yet read well enough to use it as a tool for extended learning, we feel overwhelmed by all the inherent structures we would need to revamp to give them those skills… beyond the traditional age of focus.
But if we are willing to think about and do hard things, we have the power to transform opportunities for underserved and overlooked learners across the globe. There is so much hidden beauty and potential that can come to light, when we instill a love of reading in these students. Because stories are beautiful. They unify us as humans. They change hearts and minds.
If an adolescent has access to books they can relate to; stories where they can lose themselves among the pages – they get the opportunity to discover the endless beauty contained within. And in turn, to strengthen the skills they need to reach their full potential – in school, and in life.
As well-known author Kate DiCamillo wrote: “Stories are light. Light is precious in a world so dark.”
Many years ago, I had the opportunity to test a new solution to this problem. I started with a question: could we build a new shelf in the library for those millions of students who are being overlooked and underserved? Could we bring together and inspire a global community of writers to do so?
From this question, my organization was born.
In the early days, my team and I were met with many voices that called it ‘impossible.’ How can you make an early reader book engaging for a teenager? That would be impossible.
To challenge this pushback, we launched a writing contest, which brought in hundreds of amazing stories in just a few months. And we grew from there, developing a unique crowdsourcing model to bring together a community of diverse authors, and provide them with the awareness, guidance, tools, and incentives to craft new content for this unmet market. To date, we have engaged 5,000 authors from 180 countries, who are excited for the opportunity to become published, to share their voices towards a more authentic and inclusive global library for the students who need it.
If you personally love to read, it’s likely that you don’t love to read just anything and everything. Certain content may hook you, while other content just doesn’t pique your interest. You also, likely, at least occasionally, judge a book by its cover :) This is true for all readers, at every age and level. So by shifting a few key features in the books we create, we saw that we could make books that look fun to read, which feature themes and characters that feel meaningful to a wide range of interests, but which are written with easier-to-read language and format… to offer striving teen readers choices they can connect with.
And here’s what we are seeing: when we can provide students with choices for books that they can read, and want to read… they are reading them. And asking for another one. And transforming their relationship with reading. When that happens, we also start to break cycles, creating a ripple effect for future generations. According to research, a child's mother's literacy level is considered the single greatest predictor of their future literacy skills.
The results of this work highlight what is possible. By harnessing the power of the story, every one of us can make the world more beautiful… one book – and one student – at a time.
I want to remind you of my student, Ruth. Ruth did learn to read, and she went on to excel in her classes, to graduate high school, and then graduate college, to begin a career in healthcare management. And earlier this year, Ruth became a mother to her own baby boy. Ruth’s son, Zchary, is just 3 months old, but Ruth reads to him every night. Ruth’s son is being raised as a reader, starting at birth.
THIS is how we break cycles. This is how we prove the impossible to be possible.
We do not need to give up on an entire generation of readers because we feel it is ‘too late,’ or because we’re not quite sure where to begin. Sometimes, we must look at things differently. We must challenge the assumptions we’ve grown comfortable with. And once we do, we can find the beauty of hidden solutions, just beneath the surface. Ones that seem initially complex, but which can in fact be simple and elegant. Once we do, we will see how we can make the future bright, for everyone.