A forum on childhood literacy, “America’s Reading Crisis: The Impact on our Children, Families and Community Plus Solutions,” was held on Oct. 25. The event featured a panel of eight speaking childhood literacy and its impact on life.
Panelists included professors, nurses and some of the top voices in northeast Pennsylvania. The audience was made up of area teachers and educators as well as students from Wilkes.
The event began with Vicki Jones, an assistant professor and program coordinator for literacy at Wilkes. Jones discussed literacy statistics among young children. She went into the impact that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on early childhood learning and how teachers have been helping in this last year.
It is believed that once a child reaches third grade, they must begin to read in order to learn instead of continuing to learn to read. According to the U.S. National Center for Education Statistics, 34 percent of students are below a proficient reading level.
Bill Jones, president and CEO of the United Way of Wyoming Valley, spoke on the work that the United Way has done to help underprivileged children, including offering many programs such as book drives that give children a chance to get ahead of this curve.
Jones spoke on how literacy among third graders can give clues into who will drop out of high school and/or will become incarcerated in the future. The goal of the United Way programs is to help keep this from occurring by addressing the issue at a young age.
The next two speakers were Shannon Bennett and Kimberly Nizegoda. Bennett is the director of special education at Hanover Area School District, and Nizegoda is the director and program coordinator of the Intensive English Program at Wilkes.
Both spoke on the issue from their perspective as educators and how teaching methods need to change and adapt to different students. Both have experiences in many different classroom environments and highlighted the pros and cons of all in the goal of blending them to make a better classroom.
Wilkes’s own Kimmy Nguyen, an assistant professor of pharmacy practice, and Emily Havrilla, an associate professor and the chair of undergraduate nursing, spoke on health literacy.
Only 12 percent of adults are health-literate, meaning that they can understand and complete the task needed to take medicine and complete wellness. The literacy needed to understand items such as this begins at a young age and making sure young children can read proficiently.
The seventh speaker was Christine Ferrato, an associate professor of reading at Luzerne County Community College, continued to speak regarding learning in higher education.
Ferrato spoke about how many people assume that once someone is in college that they can read and are literate and while most of the time this is true, work may still needed to get them to a proficient level.
“Once primary education ends, the learning still should not. The best way to create more contributing members of society is to push the learning after they receive their diploma,” said Ferrato.
The last speaker of the night was the superintendent of Hanover Area School District, Nathan Barrett. Barrett spoke about the importance for action from the legislators and how teachers were taking the first step by coming to the forum and listening to how to create and make changes.
“The voices we need are all in this room. The people on this panel will not stop until the courts hear us. And even then we will fight for the help needed for our educators,” said Barrett.
Jones also addressed the importance of literacy forums.
“Literacy is everyone’s concern and eventual students may have children and they need to understand that there is a right way to teach reading. “We all need to ask our schools and our legislators that our curriculum we are using is based on the science of reading.”