Observations From Below: Until Every Child Reads

Hello, my name is Bryan Dooley. I’ve had the pleasure of working with Read Write Spell for the past several months, as a liaison between the organization and the Action learning Team through Leadership Winston Salem.

Kris Cox asked me to write a brief reflection on our journey over the last few months. It started even before Leadership Winston-Salem when the Program director Katherine Perry sent all Leadership Winston Salem participants a description of all the potential Action Learning projects and asked us to rank them according to our preference.  I’ll be honest and say that one of my considerations was finding a project

I could contribute to, even though I have Cerebral Palsy.  My second thought was that I wanted to do something with reading because one of my favorite hobbies is reading my Kindle. So, I ranked Read Write and Spell high on my list, and eventually, I was placed there.  It’s remarkable how much thought Leadership Winston-Salem out into team building. I spent almost the whole opening retreat working with people who were chosen to be on the Read, Write, Spell Action Learning Team along with me, although we didn’t know that at the time.  We played lots of team-building games the first day, and eventually received our assignment for the duration of the Leadership Winston Salem.

The group liaison oversaw communicating between the Action Learning Team and the organization, in our case, Read, Write, and Spell. Since I don’t have a traditional day job, I volunteered my time.  I have had a great experience in getting to know Kris and supporting the vital work of this organization.

I’m a product of the Winston-Salem Forsyth County Public School System, so it was shocking to me that so many of our communities’ students don’t read on grade level by the third grade. Kris explained that 55% of all kids are not reading proficiently, and how that creates problems for the rest of their lives.  It really bothers me. It took me a while longer than normal to read well, and spelling remains a challenge for me even today. It’s also fascinating to me that we know how to solve this, through the science that Read, Write Spell uses to teach reading, but we won’t implement it, because it’s not how our system has always taught reading.  I’ve been honored to be part Read, Write Spell attempt to change that. Kris has shown my group and me general samples of the pretests that they give, and that was eye-opening. Many of our students can’t write all the letters of the alphabet by the third grade, and that’s the first step to reading. There’s a long way to go. As part of our process, my Action Learning Team produced two deliverables for Read, Write Spell. Both are designed to help in the recruiting of new volunteers. One is a social media plan, and the other is a course description they can take to colleges.         

As part of the Action Learning Team, I hope our work helps. It’s clear to me that this is a community-wide problem that’s going to take members of our community from all backgrounds and ages to begin addressing. 

I hope you’ll be joining me in continuing to support the work of this organization, in whatever way you find possible. The passion of the staff is infectious, and they have great ideas to make our community better, through the gift of reading. But they can’t do it alone.