PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Tuesday is Read Across America Day, which supports an effort that is celebrated all year round at one Philadelphia-based literacy nonprofit.
Achieve Now works with School District of Philadelphia students in kindergarten to second grade to help teach them the foundational skills needed to get to grade-level reading by third grade.
"The main thing we teach is phonics," said Sean Kairschner, executive director. "Study after study has shown than phonics is the most impactful intervention to students who are reading behind grade level — and particularly students who are from low socioeconomic status groups, who are [English language learners], who are students from low-literacy households, and who are students who may have a reading disability like dyslexia."
Achieve Now has more than 20 corporate partners, whose employees volunteer to coach the same student each week for an hour. Those sessions are now virtual because of the pandemic.
"In a typical year, we normally have 15 partner schools, 22 corporate partners, and typically serve about 600 students," Kairschner said.
He said it’s smaller this year — by about half — because of COVID-19.
Attorney Brittany Stepp, with Eckert Seamans, has been a literacy coach on her lunch hour for a few years. She works with a second-grade student this year.
"It gives the kids a different person to look up to and to see how reading really does play a big part in your day-to-day job. I asked my student what she wanted to be when she grew up, and she said, 'An entrepreneur.' And I said, 'Go for it,'" she said.
Stepp and her colleagues went a step further to help students. They raised money to give books, school supplies and headphones to nearly 100 kids in their cohort to help make their surroundings more conducive to learning.
"We walked away as a firm feeling pretty proud of that. And we know that a lot of these materials are things that students just don’t have," Stepp said. "Not only were we dedicating our time to learning with them, but that we were making this the best learning experience that we could."
Kairschner says reading and comprehension is "the end point of everything that we do."
Achieve Now hopes to take its programs to other communities to improve low literacy among American children.