By Lauren Martin | Program Director
Word Rebel has officially completed its fifth and final year of programming.
Because of your generosity, we are grateful to be able to close out our final year of programming with a second donation of books for all of our families, which includes Oh the Places You'll Go!, Horton Hears a Who and other modern classics by Eric Carle, Peter Reynolds, Mo Willems and more.
As you may know, Word Rebel is a volunteer-run charity. As the founder and program director, I can no longer lead Word Rebel's New York City programming while living out of state. While no longer donating books, Word Rebel will now be a one-stop shop for under-resourced families and educators to find free books, eBooks, literacy activites and other early childhood educational materials.
I founded Word Rebel on the belief that - despite limited time and resources - low-income families could give their children the same opportunities as affluent families. Since 2014, you have helped make this possible - raising nearly $35,000 to donate over 10,000 books.
In addition to book donations, our family engagement and literacy curriculum - delivered via weekly email and text message - has been proven to boost child learning by an additional three months over the course of one year. All of our families who enrolled over the past five years will continue to receive educational text messages until their children are in third grade.
Since 2014, Word Rebel has empowered parents living in poverty to make literacy part of their child's daily routine. Five years ago, I was teaching high school special education in NYC. I realized 9 of my 10 students did not truly have a reading disability; they had a vocabulary deficit. I was teaching 21-year-old seniors who believed they could not read. In reality, I was witnessing the cycle of poverty, which only allows a privileged minority to prioritize early learning experiences. I decided I could keep teaching or I could reach children before they were misclassified with learning disabilities.
If you would like to continue to support our mission to close the preschool readiness gap, I recommend the organizations below:
Please accept our deepest gratitude for your generosity over the past five years.
We hope you know how much we have appreciated your support.
Links:
By Lauren Martin | Executive Director
By Lauren Martin | Executive Director
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