Fighting illiteracy
As a business owner, one of the most heartbreaking things to me is an employee who fails because he or she can't read. These people are smart and speak English as a first language, but for one reason or another, don't possess basic reading skills.
My boyfriend is an electrician and when his work took him into elementary schools to install new equipment, he saw firsthand an element in the equation of illiteracy. He told me stories of overcrowded, understaffed schools filled with distracted children and frazzled teachers. While the staff was doing its best with the resources it had, it was an environment that could have been more conducive to learning.
Children who don't learn to read are almost surely sentenced to life in poverty. Poverty often leads to crime. Troubled, I wondered what I could do to help. Serendipitously, I had my own dog enrolled in a Therapy Dog class where we were told about the R.E.A.D. Program. What great luck. Not only could I help fight illiteracy, the solution involved dogs.
The R.E.A.D. Program
R.E.A.D. stands for Reading Education Assistance Dogs. And that's just what it is. By reading aloud to dogs, kids improve their overall reading skills. R.E.A.D. teams volunteer in schools, shelters, youth detention centers, libraries and more. The dog and handler team come equipped with a comfy, inviting blanket and picture books to accommodate every reading level and taste. A child settles onto the blanket with the dog, chooses a story he or she thinks the dog will like and reads to the attentive, unconditionally accepting canine reading companion.
If you ask adults, they will tell you that reading to a dog is less intimidating than reading to a person. The dog will not laugh, judge or criticize. If you ask children why they like reading to dogs, the answer is always the same: "Because it's fun!"
Learning to R.E.A.D.