Taal Hasak-Lowy wrote a letter to the editor in the Chicago Tribune

Read this letter on the Chicago Tribune's website here.

I applaud the Tribune’s editorials on literacy. Success in school, employment and life is utterly dependent on the ability to read and write. Ensuring that our state’s children are literate has a profound impact on Illinois’ future workforce, economy and safety.

At Friends of the Children-Chicago, we work with children in communities impacted by poverty and gun violence. We’ve seen how literacy opens a child’s world and buffers the impact of trauma. When a child is literate, school is a welcoming place where they can learn and flourish. When a child struggles to read, school becomes alienating.

There is an alarming correlation between early low literacy skills and children later dropping out of school and/or being incarcerated. Seventy percent of incarcerated adults cannot read at a fourth grade level, according to the National Assessment of Adult Literacy.

It’s exciting to see the recent success of science-based approaches to teaching literacy. At the same time, the illiteracy crisis is about more than curriculum. It’s about helping children who have experienced the traumas of poverty and violence get into a brain state to learn.

Meeting a child’s basic needs and ensuring that they feel safe and calm are vital, yet commonly overlooked, conditions to learning. If a child is hungry or reeling from a violent event, their body and brain are simply not ready to learn. A dysregulated child often acts out in the classroom and struggles to concentrate.

A trauma-informed approach to teaching literacy means that we tend first to a child’s well-being before shifting to reading skills. The educator is attuned to the child and notices if a child becomes overly frustrated, sad or scared and pivots to address the child’s needs.

That level of attunement and flexibility can happen in school only when teachers and aides are adequately resourced.

At Friends of the Children-Chicago, we mobilized the trusting relationship between our kids and their long-term mentors to address low reading scores. After one year of intensive literacy interventions, the number of our kids (K-7) reading at grade level increased by 24%, with an additional 20% progressing by at least one grade level.

As we work to ensure Illinois’ future prosperity, investments in trauma-informed literacy approaches should be a high priority.

— Taal Hasak-Lowy, executive director, Friends of the Children-Chicago