Why Speaking Stories?
A Reading Crisis in Our Schools
Poor reading ability has become a serious issue in this country, especially among minorities. Statistics from the Nation’s Report Card show that Black and Latino youth are far less proficient readers. Increasingly, male and female youth are caught in the school-to-prison pipeline. According to the Department of Justice, the link between academic failure and delinquency, violence, and crime is welded by reading failure.
Speaking Stories intends to address the problem of poor reading skills by providing a reading process that strengthens the reader’s comprehension skills and reading confidence.
In particular, Speaking Stories seeks to empower readers by:
- Speaking to their lives and what matters to them
- Enabling them to write their stories for other struggling readers
Speaking Stories has the potential to be a tool of social benefit, as well as a reading tool. We hope to see a shift for struggling readers in diverse and underserved communities, where they are no longer shut out of productive, gratifying futures.
We have a vision that all youth can become confident readers, empowered to create lives they love.