A Year in Review and a Look at 2022
Children are back at school in person and Raising A Reader (RAR) and generous donors like you helped get them there, ready for success.
Throughout the year, children and the caring adults in their lives read together in communities all across the United States. We are proud to have been part of building healthy brains, healthy relationships and home libraries.
The disparity gap continued to widen across the nation. RAR leaned in, listened and learned that educators, caregivers and children were really struggling. We responded with two new models: Super Summer Learning Adventures and Family Shared Reading Program. Both of these bilingual (English and Spanish) programs build home libraries, support learning recovery, and address the increased social emotional issues that are disproportionately impacting the over 150,000 vulnerable children and their families we now serve each year. That is a 20% increase since 2022!
Every day we continue to activate engagement, build knowledge, and create connections that support children in developing early language and literacy skills. We know that by building routines around book sharing, children are more prepared for kindergarten, are less likely to struggle academically, and achievement gaps resulting from systemic racial injustice will narrow.
This is the why behind our work.
Looking ahead, RAR is committed to a growth strategy that advances the field of early literacy by amplifying the voices and experiences of local families to inform early literacy strategies on a national scale.
We are also investing in new pilots, such as our Race Equity Pediatric Pilot, and developing new partnerships that will broaden our reach and address the critical issue of kindergarten readiness. And, we recently completed an audit of our extensive book collection with over 3,000 books and titles in 13 languages. We are committed to ensuring that our books reflect the lived and shared experiences of the children and familes that participate in Raising A Reader. Over 80% of our children and famlies are BIPOC and come from low-income backgrounds. Our books celebrate our children and families, encourage a love of reading, and foster future academic success. Your investment makes our work possible! THANK YOU!!!
Join with us as we continue to grow and build in communities all across the United States in 2022.
With much appreciation,
Your friends at Raising A Reader
Links:
Year In Review and a Look at 2022
Children are back at school in person and Raising A Reader (RAR) and generous donors like you helped get them there, ready for success!
Throughout last year, children and the caring adults in their lives read together in communities all across the United States. We are proud to have been part of building healthy brains, healthy relationships and home libraries.
The disparity gap continued to widen across the nation. RAR leaned in, listened and learned that educators, caregivers and children were really struggling. We responded with two new models: Super Summer Learning Adventures and Family Shared Reading Program. Both of these programs are bilingual (English and Spanish), build home libraries, support learning recovery, and address the increased social emotional issues that are disproportionately impacting the over 150,000 vulnerable children and their families we now serve each year. That is a 20% increase from 2020!
Every day we continue to activate engagement, build knowledge, and create connections that support children in developing early language and literacy skills. We know that by building routines around book sharing, children are more prepared for kindergarten, are less likely to struggle academically, and achievement gaps resulting from systemic racial injustice will narrow.
This is the why behind our work.
Looking ahead, RAR is committed to a growth strategy that advances the field of early literacy by amplifying the voices and experiences of local families to inform early literacy strategies on a national scale.
We are also investing in new pilots, such as our Race Equity Pediatric Pilot that connects pediatricians, preschool teachers and parents to increase literacy gains among vulnerable children. And, we just completed an audit of our diverse collection of over 3,000 books with titles in 13 languages. We are committed to ensuring that our books reflect the lived and shared experiences of the children and famlies who engage with Raising A Reader; 80% of whom are BIPOC and from low-income backgrounds. Our books and curricula celebrate our children and families which fosters their love of reading and leads to future academic success!
Join with us as we continue to grow and build in communities all across the United States in 2022.
With much appreciation,
Your Friends at Raising A Reader
Links:
Children are back at school!
Thanks to your support, Raising A Reader helped ease that transition for 150,000 children across the nation in 36 states! We are now reaching 15% more children and families across the US. All year long, children and caring adults read together with support from Raising A Reader. Our evidence-based programs help build healthy brains, strengthen relationships, and build the literacy skills to be ready for kindergarten and reading by 3rd grade. Building on the strength of our Classic Red Book Bag Rotation model, we rolled out two new programs to help families build home libraries and establish at home reading routines, Super Summer Learning Adventures and Family Shared Reading. These programs helped families build at home libraries, activate summer learning and reinforce shared literacy routines. Along with carefully selected bilingual books, we included a bilingual guide in English and Spanish with weekly exercises, activities and tips for reading with children ages 0-8. We are excited to share that Family Shared Reading was just selected as a 2021 Library of Congress Best Practice Honoree.
Here are some of the testimonials we have received this year:
“My husband passed away due to COVID and having the constant routine of opening the red book bags to escape into books offered my daughter and I a way to process and heal emotions."
"We look forward to the RAR book bags and stories, as reading the books with my children has helped with some of the deep emotions, we as a family are feeling now."
"Reading gives us a chance to end the day in an emotionally safe way, no matter what is going on in our world."
Across the nation, over 80% of children from low-income backgrounds are not ready for kindergarten, one of the greatest predictors of later school success. Over 80% of the families we serve are struggling to make ends meet and your support really makes a difference. Raising A Reader takes a village!
Throughout the pandemic we worked closely with our 285 Affiliates to safely implement RAR programs at nearly 3,000 local sites and developed 11 new Affiliate partnerships including the addition of Tribal Child Care. We continue to support them in helping their families in crisis during this difficult time, through monthly virtual Town Halls and our new social emotional curriculum for having age-appropriate conversations about sensitive topics.
We know that children across the nation do not have a level playing field. To that end, we have activated a Race Equity Agenda that provides us with a roadmap to ensure children of all races, socioeconomic backgrounds, and geographies have access to Raising A Reader. We recently conducted an audit of our book collection of over 3,000 titles with selections in 13 languages. We are making sure that our titles reflect the lived experiences of the populations we serve.
Your support has never been more critical if we are to stem learning loss and reach children who need it most with a program that gets results, is easy to implement and easy to scale. We thank you for your past support. With your continued support,Raising A Reader again this year and help us meet our goal of reaching 200,000vulnerable children and families by 2022.
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From our community to yours, hello!
Inspired, hopeful, and energized are all words that come to mind when reflecting on the generosity of supporters like you, who share our commitment to helping families develop, practice, and maintain the home-based literacy routines essential for academic success.
As you may know, RAR is now in the second year of advancing a bold strategy for growth to serve 200,000 children annually by the end of 2022. In addition to adding innovative new features to our current program offerings, we will continue to prioritize engaging under-resourced communities and low-income families while also strengthening the effectiveness of our programs through an increased focus on racial equity.
This summer has been a summer like no other. With data from our partners like EdTrust and New America (below), stories, and input from the field, we keep learning more about the issues facing the communities we serve and how best to serve those benefiting from our Affiliates. Although these data points share a small story of how the pandemic has affected the families we serve we know that there is much more we will learn in the months and years ahead.
- More than 60% of parents worry that their child will fall behind when they start kindergarten.
- For families below poverty level, 69% reported barriers existed to their child accessing online supports, such as their computer runs too slow, while 61% said their internet was too slow
- 66% of Hispanic parents survived, and 56% of Black parents survived commented tech-related disruptions in learning – further widening the racial gap in the United States
Throughout our learnings, we have proudly discovered how to continue to provide resources families need, including social-emotional supports, materials in Spanish and English, and resources to support students and their families who will be entering school for the first time this fall. Your recent donation not only supported our mission through our classic model but also Super Summer Learning Adventures. Formed from research from the field, like those above - this summer, we aim to serve 40,000 students by developing and reinforcing early learning skills through investigation, critical thinking, imagination, and meaningful family experiences with this offering. Families have been equipped with bilingual reading materials, a bilingual family guide with six weeks of daily learning activities, a reading journal, access to a digital book library, and other hands-on learning materials. This program supports families in preparing their children for the school year ahead and offers optional program enhancements, including a family guide to supporting social-emotional growth in children and other items like cozy stuffed animals and a sturdy backpack to start the new school year.
As we navigate the shifts in our education system, we look forward to a continued collective effort that empowers families and creates successful learning environments for all children. Your support of our mission has helped us tremendously– and from all of us, thank you!
Raising A Reader
Dear Friend,
Raising A Reader (RAR) pursues our mission by building the capacity of local Affiliates to engage families in developing at-home literacy routines. We prioritize children least likely to achieve educational success by focusing on kindergarten readiness and 3rd-grade reading levels. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many of the students we serve have experienced close to a year of either hybrid or distance learning and are under unprecedented stress as they face uncertainty, economic hardship, and a lack of social support systems. Caregivers now have to support learning without having tools, resources, and knowledge about providing high-quality early learning experiences. COVID-19 has had disproportionate impacts on low-income communities and communities of color, whose children were already likely to face learning gaps of one or more years compared to their peers.
The year 2020 was an inflection point for RAR in terms of program innovation. RAR implemented several innovative pilots and introduced a new offering into the marketplace - the Family Shared Reading Program (FSRP). FSRP is a model that enables families to build their home libraries and receive tools and resources to effectively promote at-home learning via shared reading routines and provides professional development for educators on shared reading strategies and family strengthening. FSRP builds families' home libraries with bilingual children’s books and a family guide that equips caregivers with strategies to maximize shared reading time. The program supports educators with additional online training and resources to provide high-quality virtual or in-person connections with families. RAR is also piloting several digital tools to enhance family communication and engagement with RAR programming, including our Family Learning Circle app which incorporates our FSRP curriculum into a group-texting app that allows not only for communication between educator and parents but also parent-to-parent, which is designed to reduce family isolation and promote peer-to-peer learning.
Besides this offering, Raising A Reader has been working hard on a variety of other projects, including supporting our Affiliates with rotating their Red Book Bags in addition to strengthening our partnerships with coalitions, funders, school districts, Head Start sites, and other service providers across the country. In this past year, RAR doubled down on its commitment to turn the tide of the systemic inequality that exists in the current education system through the development of a race equity agenda. This serves as a guidepost for ways RAR holds itself accountable for Black and LatinX families, neighborhoods, and schools, in particular. RAR is in the process of completing a book audit to ensure the book collection reflects the life experiences of all families served. As we navigate the shifts in our education system, we look forward to a continued collective effort that empowers families and creates successful learning environments for all children. Your support of our mission has helped us tremendously– and from all of us, thank you!
Raising A Reader
Links:
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