Social Justice Literacy Nights
There are so many ever present barriers to entry that can come into play that it can sometimes feel almost impossible for parents to have the time, energy, money, knowledge, where-with-all, or feeling of inclusion to spend quality time engaging with their child in most routine day-to-day ways, let alone add in an additional focus on literacy. Attending a literacy night with their child would seem insurmountable too many. Think about the potential barriers that events such as these might pose, and but instead of considering them each one at a time, put them all together.
Imagine a single parent, working multiple jobs but still living below the poverty line, whose first language isn’t English, who has very limited access to transportation, and who is also possibly struggling with substance abuse. Now imagine this same parent is a non-causasian mother who is attempting to raise multiple children facing all the challenges laid out above. Literally all of the cards are stacked against her. Does she have the capability or capacity to take time to sit down and actively engage in literacy activities with her children? Literacy nights aren’t just about the children. They’re about building family literacy and the understanding of the importance of literacy, then giving parents new tools as well as showing them simple methods that they can incorporate into their own families day-to-day routines.
A 2018 survey of American families found that only 30% of parents read aloud to their children for a minimum of 15 minutes a day. We know that parents reading aloud is a “keystone habit” that kicks off a cascading chain reaction of positive lifetime effects. Children hear a wider variety of words, neural development increases, kids are set on a path to become lifelong readers, their ability to pay attention and concentration increases, and emotional bonding forms which leads to better cooperation. Children who are actively and consistently read aloud to have an increased capacity for empathy as they learn to see the world through the eyes of various characters. Now add the following parameters with regard to book selection to just 15 minutes a day of reading aloud to their children and imagine the outcomes: Access to a wide variety of children’s books; no overrepresentation of “male” identified characters in the main roles; sensitivity to how “female” identifying characters are portrayed; inclusion and cultural awareness of how children of color and different ethnicities are represented; incorporation of diverse family structures; and representation of children with differing abilities.
Literacy nights also function as an attempt to counterbalance the possibility (as this is a heavily debated topic) of an increasing word gap between children of different financial and racial backgrounds. This is done by not only educating the child, but by educating the parents as well. By showing parents how simple it is to sit with your child and help them shape their name (or their “letter” with younger children) out of play dough, to write down and act out their stories, no matter how silly or nonsensical they might appear to adults.
I’m reminded of a graphic I’ve seen many times, both in class and on social media. There are three people of different heights looking over a fence (a short person, a medium size person, and a tall person). There’s a baseball game or something intriguing on the other side of the fence. There are two sides to the image, one where they’re all standing on the same size box, and therefore the medium and short people have a hard time seeing over the fence. On the second side, the short person has the most boxes, and everyone can see over equally well. However, there’s a third image that I think applies to the topic at hand. There’s a third side in some versions, where there’s still a fence, but instead of wood it’s now chain link, meaning that everyone can see the game through the fence (literacy) equally well. There are some parts of the fence that people still can’t see through, and family literacy nights are one of the many ways to remove the systemic barrier — making the fence see through for more people — and to spread literary justice.
