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Literacy is Preventative Justice
Prison, unemployment, addiction, crime, dependence on social services, prostitution, and early disease/death… all these realities are fueled by illiteracy. The matrix of events and factors that lead to these destructive realities is complex, but studies show that reading can be a preventative element in directing young lives.
Mentoring Builds Social Skills
Many children grow up with few adults who will just talk with them. The simple lessons of engaged speech, responding to social cues, exchanging respect, practicing grammar and vocabulary, and increasing comfort with adult relationships all prepare children to engage the outside world with confidence and competence.
Mentoring Nurtures Emotional Intelligence
Learning is an adventure with numerous life-empowering obstacles to tackle. Every week, you and your mentee will practice the art of overcoming those obstacles.
Dr. Gottman teaches, “Adult emotion coaches] value negative emotions, are not impatient with a child’s expression of them, and use the emotional experience as an opportunity for bonding by offering guidance through labeling emotions and problem-solving the issue at hand.”
Supportive Adults Build Self-Esteem
The Harvard University’s Center for the Developing Child has extensively researched what factors affect mental/academic/emotional health in children. As a conclusion to much of that research, Harvard published:
Science shows that children who do well despite severe hardship have had at least one stable and committed relationship with a supportive adult. These relationships buffer children from developmental disruption and help them develop “resilience,” or the set of skills needed to respond to adversity and thrive.
Literacy mentoring is not a cure-all, and the Harvard study discusses the many-layered impact of stable and supportive adults, like caregivers.
Still, literacy experts nationwide, in big cities and small towns, repeatedly tell us that the social-emotional impact on a child with a committed reading mentor is as significant, if not greater than, the literacy impact.
Wanda McKinney, a Fort Worth Reading Mentor, said, “The first baby that I had was very shy, but when she started learning to read, and the lightbulb came on, I will never forget the day that I left there, and I was shouting ‘Lord, thank you!’ And the next year, when I saw her, her whole demeanor had changed. Her self-esteem was through the roof!”
