Illiteracy in the US: Education starts here!

When I refer to education "Beginning Here" it sounds like a vague statement. Not so. The reason is literacy begins any place a child is. Let me explain.
It begins in the home first. We now know children can begin to recognize letters and sounds or what we educators call, "letter, sound recognition" at an extremely early age. As young as two in some cases (note not all cases). Next, and very quickly after letter sound recognition occurs, they can often begin to recognize "sight words, or high frequency words." These are words such as, "and, the, I, a , to, an, you," etc. Children are able to do this because these sounds and words are used again and again. They hear and see them every place and delight when they recognize what they are.
From there it is ideal for children to begin pre-school, Head Startand and go on to kindergarten. The scientific data and observations about children who experience early literacy beginnings demonstrates they have higher success rates in school.
I know first hand what it is to have a very bad elementary beginning, as I had no early home or kindergarten learning, there was no one practicing the alphabet with me or even reading me any stories or books. Reading was not something that was nurtured in my home. Consequently, in the fourth grade it was discovered, after years of faking my way through, I could not read. It was so horrible for me I finally dropped out of school before I even completed the 9 th grade. Children who are that far behind, unless an intense "Individualized Learning Plan" is put in place and acted upon, never catch up. They begin planing ways of dropping out as they can not stand the degradation, constant, unending, daily
struggle school is for them.
Now we ask what happens to the adults who have never learned to read? What happens to the more than 30 million Americans who are functionally illiterate? The answer is we continue to create learning centers. We act with the utmost compassion. We work as volunteers and actively createing environments and programs where people feel safe and accepted even though they can not read. We treat the situation as if it were anything else needing immediate attention and compassionate intervention.
We do things such as I am doing with all my children's books. I know the reality of illiteracy in our homes. I understand why there is failure many times as teachers send home reading books for the students to sit down and read with their parents. I saw these little assignments fail over and over in the schools in which I was a principal. I personally experienced this during my entire elementary school experience. Things being sent home to houses where the parents can not read or speak English. This type of thing sets everyone, from the student, to the parent, to the teacher up for failure. We must do our own homework as educators before we randomly send home assignments or books to be read. We must know our students and their homes.
My answer to this is I am writing and developing a full line of children's books with audio books. The students can take the books home, adults can be asked to spend 15 minutes each day reading along with their children using the audio book along with the book first. Everyone gets to see the words, hear the words and the story. After a few times they all become able to read together.
To make the audio books special, with an upscale feel, there are original songs written by composer, Maynard Williams and the narrations, with character voices, are beautifully recorded by former BBC presenter and voice-over artist, Paul Mackenzie from Nottinghamshire, England.
There are lesson guides for teachers and parents as well. These guides take the books and their text one step further. The Lesson Guides help adults expand on what is being read by crossing curriculum. This means the materials in the Lesson Guides are carefully developed by myself and a wonderful biologist, Dr. Kathleen Farquharson to expand on the contents fo the books. We show, in the guides, how to turn activities into the materials children are tested on in the elementary schools. We do this by aligning the guides to the National Standard's of Learning in areas of, science, language arts, history, geography, art, music, etc. These guides make it easy for home schoolers, classroom teachers or any family who enjoys doing a few extra activities with their children.
The fight against illiteracy in our country is awareness. That is the first remedial move to solving any great problem. Remember, "Education starts Here!"

Education in the Nunivak Bush of Alaska

Sat. August 29th. I woke at 7:30 Alaska time and decided to take a walk alone to reflect about my last two days with the Cup'ig Eskimo people. I wanted to try to remember as many stories and interesting things I had seen and been told. The children have been a delight and as sweet and funny as any children one meets in the world.

I had one last thing I wanted to get done while I was on the Island and that was to walk through the cemetery. I tried during several of my tours with the children to go see the cemetery and the children simply changed the subject or they immediately changed our direction for another destination. I quickly understood it is not the same as my children who grew up playing in our cemetery. They even played basketball over there as the woman who rented the caretakers house had two boys the same age as two of my youngest kids. The cemetery was the playground out in the country as we were 2.5 mi. from town.

The cemetery was only a short walk from the little house we were staying in. So with movie and still camera in hand I began my trek through the silent streets. As I trudged through the sandy street up to the grassy windblown hill over looking the sea I could see the white crosses. The brightest white ones I came to see whee the newest. All the crosses where the same and for the exception of three or four they were all just crosses, no adornments, flowers or other decorations. The crosses all had the name of the deceased, the DOB and the DOD. It appeared they were put up painted and labeled and then they were never repaired or repainted after the time they went in. There were many that had been long stripped of their paint and information by the constant winds, blowing sands and harsh weather.

There was one grave that was heavily adorned with silk flowers, a sitting angel, many little shells and rocks. I looked through the artificial silk flower vine wrapped around the cross which covered the DOB and DOD. I carefully moved the flowers to see the name and information only to find it was the 6 years old girl that Nus and Howard had told me about.

This little girl fell through the ice and went under the water. They said how fortunate they felt to be able to recover the body. It would have been an even more tragic death to have not recovered her for burial. That would have been the case with us all. When there is no body one feels empty and has an even more difficult time with the morning process without a body. This young and tragic death impacted everyone in Mekoryuk as one can only imagine. This entire ordeal was horrible. When something happens to someone in Mekoryuk
I have come away from this village a changed woman. I will never view life or circumstances the same again. I was so richly and deeply touched by all the people I met on the Island. having the precious opportunity to give copies of all my books, audio books and to spend time with each child if only for the time it took to ask their names and sign each book for them it was still life altering.

I only pray they feel a little the same...that would satisfy me. There are actually no words to describe the feelings I felt and the instant and deep affection I feel for the Cup'ig people. Their beautiful faces and gracious smiles are enough to win even the coldest heart. I am still pondering the praying about the emotion I continue to feel about this adventure I so desperately knew I had to make. I had to do more research and see, feel, smell touch, everything I could in my short three day stay in order to finish the last three books for my Nuni of Nunivak Island series.

Beside all this my poor artist Juliann Kaiser said, "you had better take thousand and thousands of pictures for me!" We had both worked on Nuni basically blind and when I walked and came across one beach which looked exactly and I mean exactly like the one in our book I stood and with goose bumps running all over my body I just wept uncontrollably. I asked God how is it possible Juliann and I could have made such an incredible connection without ever seeing this incredible place?

I always say that as soon as we meet another person our lives are altered forever. You can never go back to being the same person as that new person who comes into your life changes you. So I say thank you to Nus for helping me these past three years, and to Howard her dedicated and gentle husband, i will never forget the fast and easy smile of Solomon, the first Cup'ig man who met us at the air strip, I thank Alice, Edith, Annie, Pam, Boyd, Peggy from the school for their warmth toward us. I will never forget Ralph, Stephen, Nathan, Sandra and most of all all those wonderful, wonderful children in the Mekoryuk School. I love you all and pray the Nuni books bring pride to you and enrich your lives.

I want the world to know about this quickly vanishing people. Their language and very existence is in peril. We could actually see them become swallowed up by our present day society. They need to find work, go away for their educations and they marry into other cultures more readily in this day and age. I hope the Nuni series will capture and preserve some of their culture and beauty. Thank you my dear friends.

I will be adding more as I can think back on all this. I will be posting pictures and video after I can get home and get settled.

As they say on Nunivak "tawa piura" my friends.