Enriching Lives through Family Literacy

Today, I am pleased to welcome out first guest writer:  my friend Brenda, who is a blogger and a parent herself. Below is her wonderful piece about family literacy.

It is hard for me to imagine a home without books in it.  From the time I can first remember, I have memories of being read to and of reading myself.  My constant and most favorite form of escape during my troubled teenage years was reading.  I was one of those children to fall easily into a made up world, so it was easy for me to implant myself into the made up world of books.  I remember being dropped off at the county library for hours.  I was never afraid; I loved being surrounded by thousands of books, and relished the idea of getting to read some of them in a quiet organized space.

When I had my first child I read to her constantly.  She would fall asleep in my arms while I read out loud with voices and interesting inflections.  Sometimes I would read books that were way above her level of understanding.  I never really knew why I did that, I just wanted her to hear the words and I didn’t own many baby books.

With my second child I read to her constantly.  This time we poured over baby dictionary books.  She wanted to know what every picture meant and what the name was.  Every day we read the same books, but she loved it and it was easy for me to make her happy this way.

With my third child I read to her constantly.  It started with mostly books about babies, or baby animals, and now she wants books about dinosaurs and exotic animals.  Her taste in books changes more often than her sisters’ did at this age, but she has more to choose from than her sisters did.

This is why it is hard for me to imagine a home without books.

But when I learned from a Kindergarten teacher last year that half of the children coming to her class that year would be coming from a home without a single book, having never been read to, I suddenly had to try to imagine that.

Most of their parents could not speak or read English, I knew that, I work for a literacy program and I was faced with that fact every day.  But most of them could not even read or write in their own language either.  Why was that so hard for me to imagine? 

Because I loved to read and write my entire life, when I started working for a literacy program, I was forced to try to empathize with the people who called for help.  What would it feel like to not be able to read or write?  What would it feel like to not be able to communicate with people in a foreign country?  

Now I am faced with a whole new level of people to try and understand: adults in a new country, with children going to an English speaking school, never being able to read to them even in their own language, never being able to show them the love of books.

As it is with many injustices I see, I first get sad, and then angry, and then I start to ask myself, what is the answer?  How can we fix it?  Last year I tried to start a school wide book club at our school with the ESL teacher.  It was a flop.  Too many teachers and educators had too many negative thoughts about it, so it never came to fruition.  Questions like, what about the parents who can’t read?  We said, let’s have reading circles every week where parents can come and read the book to each other.  It was too difficult for some to see how it would happen.  I was discouraged.

This year I have started researching how to help.  This is how I found out about the concept of Family Literacy.  One website I found, the National Center for Family Literacy, offers many resources and ideas.  On their front page, they state:

• “Children’s reading scores improve dramatically when their parents are involved in helping them learn to read.
• Low family income and a mother’s lack of education are the two biggest risk factors that hamper a child’s early learning and development.”

Family literacy to me is more than just reading and learning to love books.  It is about supporting families in their endeavor to embrace education.  The LINCS website defines Family Literacy as four functions: “(1) interactive literacy activities between parents and their children; (2) training for parents regarding how to be the primary teacher for their children and full partners in the education of their children; (3) literacy education for parents that leads to economic self-sufficiency; and (4) age-appropriate education to prepare children for success in school and life experiences.”

In my opinion, two of the most important functions are: One, providing books to children and teaching them to read and to love reading, and they in turn bring that home to parents, hopefully sparking an interest in them to learn to read.

Two:  Teaching the adults that come to adult literacy.  They come wanting to read and learn, and they have seen that life is not complete without these skills.  They can take their new passion and pass it on to the children in their lives.

Adult literacy is in a crisis in this country.  Education is in a crisis in this country.  Right now there is very little funding for adult literacy, and each year it seems the funding for education gets smaller.  It makes perfect sense for these educational ideas to join together, targeting these two kinds of learners together.

There are many family literacy programs throughout the country.  Many programs also put books into the hands of children.  These are great starts.  Personally I feel that family literacy should be part of the entire American Education process.  How that can happen, I am not too sure.  I think it is easy enough to come up with great ideas.  Implementing them is the hard part.  But just the seed of an idea can start the process of a revolution, and I think that is what this country needs, a revolution in the field of education.

First I am starting small, and here are some of the ways we can all add to the education of families. 

Donate books to the library or to your child’s school:  Most libraries across the nation are losing funding.  Most schools are faced with the same problem.  Whether they are new books or gently used books, donating them to these programs puts books into the hands of children who need them.

Read to your children and their friends: Whether it is in their class, or when they have friends over for a play-date, read to them.  If they see adults who love to read and love to share that with them, it can be an eye opening experience for them.

Donate to a family literacy program: Either giving of your time or money is beneficial to these struggling programs.  For a list of programs please visit: America’s Literacy Directory.

Share the Wonder of the day with children you know:  Wonderopolis is “a program brought to life by the National Center for Family Literacy, [which] engages and inspires families in the pursuit of education and learning together. We help families create a new force — transforming the parent/child relationship into an engine for progress and upward mobility.”  They have a blog called “Wonder of the Day” that encourages time with your child every day.

Above all else, we need to encourage our kids, as they grow older, to be mindful of the ways they can help others.  I hope to one day live in a world where illiteracy is not an epidemic, but I only see it getting worse every year.  Maybe it will be our children who stop the “bleeding.” We need to prepare our kids for the work that will be ahead of them.

Brenda is a mother of three girls, a wife and a literacy advocate.  She works for Literacy Volunteers of NJ, serves as chair on the board of Greater Brunswick Charter School and writes the blog “Becoming a Bridge.”