Why Having Books Behind Bars Is So Important via Teen Vogue

Why Having Books Behind Bars Is So Important

Literacy is key

Teen Vogue: 10.31.2017 by Brittney McNamara

@unprisonproject

For young people, navigating the criminal justice system can be extremely difficult — and that's especially the case when you can't read or can't read well. According to DoSomething.org, 85% of young people who face trial in the juvenile justice system are functionally illiterate, meaning the can't read at the level required to do most jobs or cope with many everyday situations. More than 60% of all inmates are also functionally illiterate.

This matters, according to The Literacy Center, because people cannot read or cannot read well have trouble finding a job, something being incarcerated can also make it hard to do once released. And a Department of Justice report established an association between literacy and crime. But Deborah Jiang Stein, author of Prison Baby and founder of the unPrison Project, said this could change if we simply provided books for young inmates and those at risk of incarceration.

"It's a quiet fact, it's really not glamorous related to incarceration. It's interesting because it doesn't feel like this big activist change. It's so small and yet so big, it's a shocking number, isn't it?" Jiang Stein tells Teen Vogue. "There's a number, something like, readership goes up 50% if a kid owns a book."

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In order help the issue before it starts, Jiang Stein's organization, the unPrison Project, provides books to women in prison to read to their children on visiting day. That way, according to the organization, the children who own books are more likely to be literate, which could play a role in helping them avoid being vulnerable to incarceration themselves.

This story is part of Kids Incarcerated, a Teen Vogue series on youth incarceration in the United States for National Youth Justice Awareness Month.  READ MORE >>

Literacy – Spanning North America ::Delaware :: Illinois :: Kamloops BC :: Tampa Bay FL

Literacy: Spanning North America

Literacy Delaware

What's the word?

Scrabble fundraiser to help Literacy Delaware adult education

Coastal Point: 3.209.2017 by Laura Walter

What wonderful words can you weave?

People who love letters can team up in a Scrabble tournament to raise money for a nonprofit helping teach adults to read.

Scrabble at the Beach is a happy-hour fundraiser for Literacy Delaware, which is based locally in Frankford, but operates statewide.

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Bailey first attended a Scrabble fundraiser in Wilmington and had a blast. She has also tutored adults in the literacy program through the Frankford Public Library.

“It’s a free program for students, and all the tutors are volunteers. There are only 2.5 paid employees in Delaware,” she said.

Bailey said she is upset by the statistic that in Delaware, 1 in 7 adults reads at or below a fifth-grade reading level, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

Volunteers teach basic reading skills for adults who haven’t progressed beyond an elementary-school reading level, plus some English language instruction. Lessons are taught one-on-one.

Since 1983, more than 2,600 adults have studied literacy with Literacy Delaware. In 2015, services expanded to include Sussex County, partnering with the Frankford Public Library.

It can be tough to live with lower literacy skills. People can use other skills and context clues to get things done, but there are gaps that they can close by improving their reading skills, such as reading emails, medicine bottles or notes from their children’s teacher. Eventually, Bailey said, the family’s children may not be strong readers either.

Bailey recalled one learner who was functioning as an adult and member of the local fire company.

“Here’s a guy — he was 41 years old. He was able to pass all the fire department tests without reading, because they’re really mechanical tests you have to do,” Bailey said. “So, I took him on, and after a year, he had his driver’s license.”  READ MORE >>

Night of 1000 Stars celebrates 20th anniversary

Illinois Literacy: Fall 2017

Celebrating the achievements of adult learners remains one of the greatest joys I experience as Secretary of State and State Librarian. I had the pleasure of attending the Night of 1000 Stars event in Chicago on its 20th anniversary. Learners shared original poems that illustrated the remarkable strides they have achieved in their educational journey. As a former educator, I know the importance that recognition provides in building confidence and self-esteem in learners. In this edition, I am honored to congratulate the Spotlight on Achievement and Spotlight on Service award winners.

Featured are the inspirational stories of these adults and the citizens who volunteer their time to help adult learners succeed.

The Illinois Literacy Foundation works to ensure that every Illinois citizen has access to literacy services that place them on a path to lifelong learning. I had the pleasure of hosting a local author at a foundation event during the American Library Association’s annual conference in Chicago to help highlight the mission of the foundation. Please visit the foundation’s webpage for information to learn how to become involved or host an event.

Each year, it is my privilege to sponsor Family Reading Night in Illinois. I encourage you to mark your calendars for this year’s event on Thursday, Nov. 16. This is a special night for libraries and families across the state. Please consider participating at your local library or literacy program.

Jesse White Secretary of State & State Librarian  READ MORE >>

Raise a Reader 2017: From behind bars

Kamloops This Week: 9.29.2017

It is hard to be successful in life without a high school education. 79% of male Canadian inmates lack a high school diploma, as do 71% of female inmates. 70% of inmates read at lower than a grade 8.

Low literacy likely keeps many inmates from participating in learning opportunities available to them, but those who do, not only improve their literacy skills but also raise their self esteem.

Kamloops Regional Correctional Centre (KRCC) offers inmates literacy and learning opportunities. Through the School Program inmates can work towards completing their high school diploma (Adult Dogwood).

Tonia Gillespie, a Literacy Outreach worker for Street School, connects inmates immediately on their release with Street School, so they can continue their learning journey.

In the Kamloops Partner Assisted Learning Program (KPAL) inmates work one on one with trained volunteer tutors to improve their reading and writing.  READ MORE >>

Learn Tampa Bay

Plant City Wonder Woman Angelica Ibarra

Plant City Observer: 9.29.2017 by Daniel Figueroa IV

Angelica Ibarra could have easily lived a very different life than the one she chose.

However, Ibarra, the founder of Plant City-based Learn Tampa Bay, made a habit of defying cultural norms and expectations to follow her own dreams and find her own happiness. She found it through service and empowering the community.

For nearly 15 years, Ibarra has dedicated her life to empowering communities, especially the local Hispanic community, through education.

“I felt that others in my community needed to see the same opportunities that were presented to me years ago,” she said. “It’s something that I felt was important.

Education is very powerful. To be able to share with others the value of it was something that was very important to me.”

Ibarra could have gone with the flow many times in her life, but she wanted more. She wanted more for herself, more for her family and more for the community.

Ibarra was born in Sinaloa, a coastal Mexican state along the Gulf of California. She came from a farming family, but when work dried in Sinaloa, they emigrated to the U.S. for work, first farming onions and watermelon in the South Texas border town of Edinburg. Eventually, the family relocated to Plant City where they lived a migrant lifestyle.  READ MORE >>

Family Literacy Month :: A Child Becomes a Reader: Proven Ideas from Research for Parent

A Child Becomes a Reader: Proven Ideas from Research for Parents

National Institute for Literacy: 2006

The road to becoming a reader begins the day a child is born and continues through the end of third grade. At that point, a child must read with ease and understanding to take advantage of the learning opportunities in fourth grade and beyond—in school and in life.

Learning to read and write starts at home, long before children go to school. Very early, children begin to learn about the sounds of spoken language when they hear their family members talking, laughing, and singing, and when they respond to all of the sounds that fill their world. They begin to understand written language when they hear adults read stories to them and see adults reading newspapers, magazines, and books for themselves.

Mothers, fathers, grandparents, and caregivers, this booklet is for you.

Your role in setting your child on the road to becoming a successful reader and writer does not end when she* begins kindergarten.

This booklet contains:

• A short summary of what scientific research says about how children learn to read and write

• Things you can do with your child at three different grade levels—kindergarten, first grade, and second and third grades—to help him become a reader, as well as what to look for in quality reading instruction at each grade level

• A list of helpful terms. Throughout the booklet, these terms appear in bold type

• Ideas for books to read and organizations to contact if you would like more help or information

Try a few activities from this booklet with your child. You don’t need special training or expensive materials. Just include the activities in the things you already do together every day. Make these activities part of the warm, loving relationship you are continuing to build with your child.  READ MORE >>

How Reading Rewires Your Brain for More Intelligence and Empathy via Big Think

How Reading Rewires Your Brain for More Intelligence and Empathy

Big Think: 9.12.2017 by Derek Beres

Fitness headlines promise staggering physical results: a firmer butt, ripped abs, bulging biceps. Nutritional breakthroughs are similar clickbait, with attention-grabbing, if often inauthentic—what, really, is a “superfood?”—means of achieving better health. Strangely, one topic usually escaping discussion has been shown, time and again, to make us healthier, smarter, and more empathic animals: reading.

Reading, of course, requires patience, diligence, and determination. Scanning headlines and retweeting quips is not going to make much cognitive difference. If anything, such sweet nothings are dangerous, the literary equivalent of sugar addiction. Information gathering in under 140 characters is lazy. The benefits of contemplation through narrative offer another story.

The benefits are plenty, which is especially important in a distracted, smartphone age in which one-quarter of American children don’t learn to read. This not only endangers them socially and intellectually, but cognitively handicaps them for life. One 2009 study of 72 children ages eight to ten discovered that reading creates new white matter in the brain, which improves system-wide communication.

White matter carries information between regions of grey matter, where any information is processed. Not only does reading increase white matter, it helps information be processed more efficiently.

Reading in one language has enormous benefits. Add a foreign language and not only do communication skills improve—you can talk to more people in wider circles—but the regions of your brain involved in spatial navigation and learning new information increase in size. Learning a new language also improves your overall memory.

In one of the most fascinating aspects of neuroscience, language affects regions of your brain involving actions you’re reading about. For example, when you read “soap” and “lavender,” the parts of your brain implicated in scent are activated. Those regions remain silent when you read “chair.” What if I wrote “leather chair?” Your sensory cortex just fired.   READ MORE >>

Family Literacy Month :: Why Reading at a Young Age Matters

Why Reading At A Young Age Matters

US Aid: 9.22.2015

The evidence is overwhelming. Introducing a child to reading gives them one of the most important personal habits they’ll need to have a successful career and a happy, productive life.

Why Reading at a Young Age Matters

Literacy – Spanning the US :: Orange Co CA :: Rio Rancho NM :: NJ :: Oklahoma City OK

Literacy: Spanning the U.S.

When Literacy Helps New US Citizens Achieve Their Dreams

ProLiteracy Blog: 9.22.2017 by Jennifer Paulding

This winter, the South Coast Literacy Council in Orange County, CA celebrated the new citizenship of one of its students, Badre Naqvi. She is a mother of five and a grandmother of six, with a devotion to the happiness and success of her family.

Badre was born in India and later settled in Karachi, Pakistan with her father and five siblings from 1947 to 2005.  After her husband passed away, Badre moved to the United States with her sons and later had a baby girl. She and her children lived in Little Rock Arkansas and in Virginia before landing in Yorba Linda, California in 2012. 

Even though she was unable to continue her education when she was younger, it was very important to Badre to make sure her five children attended and completed college – and they did. In 2015 she arrived at South Coast Literacy Council (SCLC) hoping to learn English and advance her own education.

In January 2017, Badre passed her citizenship with the help of her tutor, Judy Aleta. She is very happy with her classes at SCLC and always looks forward to meeting with her classmates every Tuesday. One of her sons told the council, “the English classes have greatly helped her by boosting her confidence and allowing her to pass the citizenship interview on her own.”

@ReadWestInc 

A Love, and a Leap, for English

At a young age, while attending high school in Iran, Shanin Talai fell in love with English—it was her favorite subject to study. After high school, she continued learning English as a hobby, got married, and became a mother.

Four years ago, Talai and her husband came to the United States. Although she had spent many years practicing reading and writing in English, she struggled to understand Americans and everything going on in her community. Friends referred her to ReadWest, Inc. in Rio Rancho, New Mexico. ReadWest, Inc. is a nonprofit adult literacy agency that provides one-to-one tutoring sessions that help adults learn to read, write, and speak English.

Talai enrolled in ReadWest’s U.S. Citizenship Preparation Course. With the help of her volunteer course tutor, Lynn Simpson, and the materials supplied by ProLiteracy’s National Book Fund, Talai achieved her goals. On June 26, 2017, Talai passed the course at ReadWest. She gained the vocabulary, civics, culture, and literacy skills she needed to prepare her papers for citizenship and pass the interview for the citizenship exam. She was sworn in as an American citizen in August 2017.  READ MORE >> Student Stories

@literacynj

NJ adult literacy programs focus on better-educated children and stronger workforce

My Central Jersey: 9.27.2017 by Monica Chenault-Kilgore

More than 17 percent of New Jersey’s adults, many of whom are parents, lack the basic literacy skills necessary to comprehend a note from their child’s teacher requesting a conference, to help with homework or read a bedtime story.

According to advocates, these are low-literate adults who are unable to read, write, and speak in English at levels of proficiency necessary to help their children succeed in school.

While the causes for low literacy in adults are complex, the impact on children of low-literate parents can be devastating. Research from ProLiteracy, a national adult literacy organization, states there is 72 percent chance that children with parents with low literacy rates will be at the lowest reading levels, which in turn becomes a contributor to many issues these children will face as young adults.

Elizabeth Gloeggler, chief executive officer for the Edison-based Literacy New Jersey, an adult literacy program providing direct services and support for a network of literacy programs operating in all 21 counties, feels that there is a great divide within this educationally rich state. She wants to bring attention to this issue, particularly this week, which has been designated Adult Education and Family Literacy Week by the National Coalition for LIteracy (#AEFLweek). 

“There are pocket communities where low literacy is pervasive and children are most likely being left behind as a result," she said. "What we see happening is parent[s] that are struggling with literacy. They don’t do pre-literacy things with their kids. When you get that kid to kindergarten they are already behind and are in school with kids who have been read to since being in the womb. If they are already behind they continue to stay behind. Parents that are struggling with literacy don’t know how to participate in their child’s education.”

Literacy efforts in Somerset County

Central Jersey cares about literacy

READ MORE >>

@OKCMLC

Oklahoma library official: Low adult literacy cannot be ignored

NewsOK: 9.27.2017 by Julie Serven, Exec Director-OKC Metro Literacy Coalition

I had a 40-year-old woman in my reading comprehension class who told me she quit her job when she was offered a promotion. She was too embarrassed to tell her employer she couldn't read and write well enough to do the tasks associated with the new role.

She was a hard worker and good with people. She wanted to get her childcare license so she could have her own business and take care of more children in the foster system. =But she was stuck. She needed help with reading so she could pursue her dream and give to her community the way she wanted.

Mayor Mick Cornett has previously recognized September as Adult Literacy Month, serving as a good reminder that these people exist in the Oklahoma City metro. It is to our common detriment as a city to not equip these adults with the gateway skill of reading.

An average of 1,000 adults per year are served by local providers. But an estimated 140,000 adults in Oklahoma County are considered functionally illiterate. In a knowledge economy, it is not enough to simply be able to decode words. Adults must be able to access and comprehend the information needed for them to function in daily life. For example, if they cannot communicate professionally on a job application or via email, they may not even make it to the second round of interviews for better-paying jobs.  READ MORE >>

Will Tax Reform Have a Negative Impact on Adult Literacy Programs? via ProLiteracy

@EveryLibrary 

Will Tax Reform Have a Negative Impact on Adult Literacy Programs?

ProLiteracy Blog: 11.02.2017 by Jennifer Paulding

Recent actions and inactions by Congress over the last several weeks once again point to education and adult education in particular as low priorities in the overall budget agenda. The good news was that the first budget drafts showed no significant cuts to adult education or related programs of value to our field, such as Americorps. The disappointing news is that the ongoing discussions and refinement on the budget and tax reform has included no discussion about adult education or workforce development. =Once again the lack of attention is worrisome given the old adage “out of sight out of mind.” 

With this in mind, it is critical that adult education programs are regularly included as a major issue in discussions and legislative debates that impact the budget. It is clear that nearly every social issue can be linked to low adult literacy. In each case there is little room for improvement without recognizing the need for adult basic education.

Homelessness will not be resolved if those in need cannot read and write well enough to seek assistance, get a job, or help themselves find much needed services. Those in need of better health services won’t know where to find them or how to take advantage of free services if they lack basic skills that will better guide them to improved health. It is vital to our cause that we raise these issues whenever we have the opportunity.  READ MORE >> Advocacy

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