Chicago Has A Literacy Problem. Chicagoans Like You Can Help Solve It

Hey, blockclubbers. Today's episode is going to focus on open books, which is a great nonprofit that, as you're going to learn, finds any way they can to get books to kids and adults in Chicago. And it goes well beyond just the physical books. They do one-on-one reading practice, literacy workshops. They really transform lives in neighborhoods with reading, writing, and the power of often used books. Block Club Chicago is actually teaming up with them for a Back to School with Block Club campaign. And we're asking you, listeners and readers, to raise funds to provide 2,000 free books to CPS students. Every $20 helps provide one book to a student. And your donation has double the impact. It supports our nonprofit newsroom as well and ensures that CPS students receive free books. blockclopchicago.org, hit the donate button, or click to the link in the episode show notes that is up there right now. We'll have more on this campaign at the end of the episode as well. And now let's get to it.

There's no doubt Chicago has a literacy problem. Only about 43% of CPS students grades 3 through 8 met the state's reading proficiency benchmarks last year. But like so many things in Chicago, a lot depends on the zip codes that the kids live in. And yes, a lot of the solution must come from CPS, but literacy isn't only an education issue. It's a jobs issue, an income issue, a civic participation issue. and the books themselves are an equity issue. On today's Block Club Chicago podcast, Open Books Director of Education Paula Santos on what their organization does to close the gap and how we can all help. Paula, welcome to the Block Club Chicago podcast. Hi, thank you for having me. I'm excited about this campaign that we're running with you guys, and now for a couple years we've done it, our community seems to really rally around the idea of making sure that kids have books and access to them. But I wanted to start the conversation, Paula, just if you could set up for me, how you guys had opened books, how do you view the situation of reading and literacy for kids in Chicago these days? Are we at a... Critical state, are we doing pretty good, or does it depend on maybe where you live and what schools you're going to? That is such a good and complicated question to answer. We'll start is to say that there are many people in this city, whether there are organizations like ours, teachers, the whole school district, Chicago Public School District, working toward making sure that kids are reading at their reading level, whether you're second grader, third grader, et cetera. So we're all working towards the same goal. which I think gives me a lot of hope and energy for the work that we do to close those literacy gaps. Now, Open Books works on the west side and southwest side of Chicago primarily, and we do see that kids are coming into school already with a gap in their pre-literacy, in their preparedness to go into school. And that... Gap. Thankfully, for many children closes, you know, with the care of teachers and schools that really put in the work to do that. And for some students, it doesn't. And like many other issues across our city, your zip code, you know, what block you live in, really determines a lot of how that will go for your schooling. It doesn't have to be your fate because we thankfully have... free will and a lot of people who are a lot of people who are you know aware and and trying to make sure that kids get what their need but a lot is very predetermined you know if you live in northlandale or inglewood or little village there are more gains to be made there with literacy i want to say that open books

partners with schools and we complement what schools are doing. The way that we look at it is a lot more about building a book-rich environments at home, being proponents of literacy being something that you do together as a family, and also to really encourage. curiosity-driven literacy, where if you have a child who loves reading about hurricanes or knowing about hurricanes or whatever it is, then we want to encourage that and make sure that your family has access to those books. I think that you're really hitting on an important point of it's not the sheer number of books that a city has or how they're distributed the numbers. It's about the... Quality of the book, the interest that it sparks, the ability for a reader to see themselves in some of the characters, probably all the above, Paula. Yeah, definitely. The most compelling work that my staff and the staff at Open Books does is that we thankfully get so many donations from probably many of your listeners and many of your readers and anyone who contributes to the campaign. And then our responsibility is to make sure that we are choosing the most high quality, high interest. books that we can and finding avenues for them. You know, that avenue may be at our retail store in the West Loop or it may be at the Pilsen warehouse or pay what you want store. Or where we really like to put our books is in the hands of children, families, and other adults in our communities. And we can do that for free. You know, when I mentioned high quality, what that means for us, and this is where really our work is, is make sure that we have Spanish language books. That's a big one. Access to Spanish language books is super necessary. Make sure that they're very high interest books so that we know that kids are really in. to Dogman or the National Drographic Kids Books, you know, making sure that we have what kids are asking us for at Baby Board Books. Those are very coveted because that's, you know, a baby coming into the world and having some of those like early. pre-literacy exposure is really great. And then we make sure that through our avenues in granting these books out, whether to teach her so they can build their own classroom libraries.

Or when we go to a community event and people coming to pick out books from the books mobile and they can choose their own. And then adults are also encouraged to choose a book for themselves. Or, you know, in our programs, our education programs where we work with in an after school setting or during a school where we really get to hear from kids, like what they really want to read. There's a lot of stuff they have to read at school. But I think it's really fun to be the people at the school. that's like, we can get you dog man. We can get you elephant and piggy, right? So that's the really fun part for us. I love that. I do like this idea of, you know, obviously, so we have a 17-month-old and, you know, is ingrained in us as kids to read. So we're passing that on and, you know, reading before or after during, all during the day is an important part of our son's growth, which we love. But, you know, as I mentioned, I was. born and raised in a world of reading books from my parents. And we just know the reality isn't that that is everybody. How challenging is it? And I imagine part of it is you guys really being in these neighborhoods to instill maybe that love of reading to parents who maybe didn't grow up like that so that they can also then pass it on to their kids. I imagine you want the whole family reading if at all possible. Yeah, you know, I think I have always encountered families that are very excited to get their hands on books. And whenever we talk to parents, they are so motivated to make sure that their kid loves reading and loves books. And sometimes that comes from personal experience that maybe they didn't have that opportunity. Maybe they really struggled with school. And one of the things that we hear from our community members through the community engagement work that we do as well is that sometimes there is a confidence issue. you know, you may have parents who perhaps don't feel like the strongest readers or don't have that kind of book culture as part of their background. So maybe there's a little bit of that. And one of the things that we really care about as an organization is to have books in places where you're just going to be living your life. You know, we have booknooks in health centers. We have bookstores and laundry, or rather booknooks and laundromats. At our after school space, we're not a bookstore. We're a space, community space where people can come get comic books, baby board books, adult cookbooks, saturating just part of regular life with books. And sometimes I put it as like, I used to come from the museum world where in museums we really struggle with that barrier event. into an institution, you know, and I think about that way too with like a bookstore, right, a traditional retail bookstore. What is that like, quote unquote institutional experience of it, right? So we try to like de-institutionalize it and be like, the book is here at this, you know, at your health fair or your block party or just as you're walking home from school. So that's really...

one of the biggest tools that we have to encourage a book-rich environment and to hopefully build up some confidence in maybe parents who may be wanting that. I love that because... I mean, ideally, you're at the laundromat. The kid sits down and reads a book or goes through one while you're doing laundry. But at the very least, the book nook is there, right? Like, and it's visible. And it's maybe it's not this time. Maybe it's the next time. I imagine that's part of this. It's you're chipping away at an iceberg here and just seeing the book nooks and seeing books all over the place that in and of itself almost through osmosis can lead to kids going, well, okay, hold on. Let me take a look at this. Yeah, I think our booknooks especially and the investment that we have made in our community space in North Lando is a way for us to build some infrastructure around reading, around literacy, and building that infrastructure takes a lot of resources. It takes a lot of community trust. We right now have a really big booknuck at Lando Christian Health that gets filled. Always. Like I think we have a shipment there go every two weeks because it gets completely depleted. But we need to build that trust so that that health center lets us put a book nook there, right? So we're really trying to build that infrastructure and the work that we do and it's like slow going. But we really believe in it because that opportunity matters a lot to us. The opportunity that a family or child. encounters in that moment at the health center or the laundromat like that's that's the stuff yeah that's awesome i wonder how you guys like measure the success because obviously no doubt you've reached so many kids and adults that maybe wouldn't have had books or had a love for it that do now but that's not like not the easiest thing to like measure paula i mean I know we have like literacy rates and schools, but I feel like that might be a flawed metric to determine how a nonprofit like yours is doing. I mean, there's a difference between reading and having access to books. And there's, there's a lot there. Literacy rates take sometimes decades to change. So what do you guys measure as a success? Yeah, that's a really good question. It's a very timely one because I was just in conversation with other literacy orgs in the city regarding this question. So for open books, we do have evaluation for our education programs, the programs where we see students on a regular basis. And those tend to be. the programs that we have some solid evidence for, and it's positive, because we're able to be consistent and see the same kids over multiple sessions. And we get to know them too, right? We get to kind of mold ourselves for them for the better. In terms of like broader book access, we think about retention a lot, like the example of the bookbook I just gave at the health center, the marker of success is definitely coming back.

and realizing, oh, we need more books here. People are taking them. People are not just leaving them. They want to take them. So at the rate that we're filling book nooks, also the level of interest there is in having a book nook, for example, because that means you're giving up a part of your space, right? Like wherever, whether it's an office or a more public space, in terms of the... wider literacy rates. I'll say that over the past year and a half, the Department of Literacy at Chicago Public Schools has really embraced literacy organizations. And together, we have been looking at some data together about what the literacy landscape looks like for the populations that we serve, like, you know, the partner schools, other partner organizations to get a more bird. view of like where is it moving the needle like more broadly right like beyond my sample size of 16 after school kids what does it look like more at the at the um cps level and you know all this type of melding of cps and community organizations that deal with literacy is still new and it's exciting, but it has really made me think about the possibilities of like, if we could definitely get a bird's eye view of since open books or since, you know, this other organization has been working with this zip code, this is where we see the literacy rates. And we have a little bit of data regarding that in North Laundale since we have been working. with schools and with the community in North Laundale, the rates of literacy in North Laundale are rising a little bit quicker than in the rest of the district. But that's right now as close as we're getting to this. I mean, I think books going out, the door is a huge sign, right? I mean, like you're saying, they're going somewhere. People are creating booknooks in their own homes with these books, right? So then, boy, that's as visual as it gets for a kid, is that they're right there in the home. I think that's the ultimate goal is when they leave the house, which is already a book has a book nook, and they go to the laundry mat or to the health center. Like you're saying, they're just kind of everywhere. And then, of course, in the schools. I know we have a lot of libraries in our schools. I know we don't have a ton of librarians, which poses some issues too. I don't know how much you want to dive into that, but I just know that it's not just a matter of having books sitting somewhere. It's about having the right resources for people to teach, to aid, to help kids find the right book, to teach kids how to read correctly, to teach parents how to read correctly to their kids. I mean, there's a lot of aspects to this besides just the physical paper and typing on the book. Yeah, a couple of years ago, Open Books had the support of an evaluation firm, and they're still working with us, and they did a lit review for us about book access. And what the research says is really that the interaction with the book, so like with a caregiver and a child, the quality of that interaction is so important in the success of

you know, that child with reading and other types of success. So we are very cognizant of trying to create the opportunity and experiences where a caregiver or an adult, let's say mentor, has those high quality experiences with a book, like whether it's like reading one-on-one or taking an interest in the subject matter that a kid brings to the table and we have a book for that. And I bring this question to this because whenever we talk about literacy, and I hear this from whether it's like practitioners or schools or parents, a lot is like really tangled up in literacy. It's like... not only parents, but many adults want higher literacy rates. So kids will be successful in school and successful in their life. Then we have other people that are really thinking about it in terms of enjoyment, right? Like really reading a really juicy book and like having that be part of leisure and kind of a pleasurable life, right? So there's so many things entangled in... having successful students. I think the way that me and my staff here at Open Books thinks about it is we are meeting our young people, our students, where they are in their own trajectory with reading. You know, we work with first graders that maybe are just like, not doing very well in the classroom. They have too many questions. You know, it can be a little bit disruptive sometimes. And we work with them one-on-one. And that like one-on-one attention and hearing their stories and trying to parse out what they really want to know about more is like the entry point into reading. Like we have kids who are really creative and they really want to be drawing. So getting them to draw their stories and kind of get it out of their mind. You know, that's also a type of literacy. So we really try to focus on like, where are we meeting this child? at this moment and trying to encourage those like different entry points into literacy. I think that's great because, I mean, it's awesome to get kids as young as possible to be reading and when they're out of the, when they're essentially here, right? You're born? Let's start reading to you. That's great. But that doesn't help a first grader who maybe hasn't had that experience or that love of it yet. And then maybe they're on this trajectory, you know, slightly alter it or be a part of it, the new trajectory that a student can be on. And even later than that, too, right? There are a lot of people that maybe didn't fall in love or find literacy.

till later in their childhoods. That's okay too, right? And I think that that's why it's so important that the work that you do is just so immersive in so many different ways. I'm at open-dashbooks.org, your website and under programs is just a list of all the great opportunities you have and things that you do for people. I mean, it's really... A comprehensive organization you guys have put together and built that it needs the support of the city to keep on operating. And Chicagoans who care about this stuff. Yeah, thank you for saying that I think I want to say first that we meet a lot of students that I think one of the things that I really have to, or definitely when I first started working at this organization, had to check myself in like. There are a lot of heavy needs in some organizations, sorry, in some communities for like basic services. I mean, we live in Chicago. We know that there are so many disparities in the city. However, I have met so many families on whatever income spectrum you want to look at. And a lot of them really struggle with the same things is that sometimes it's very hard to have your child who may be tired from school or wants to watch TV or, you know, kind of do anything else than read or, you know, have a conversation about reading or their interest. So that's a struggle I think is pretty universal. So I like to keep that in mind that the work that we're doing is, yes, absolutely, we choose to work in North London, Little Village, the West Side, because we know there's a lack of resources for books there. Parents, however, really, really have similar aspirations. for their children's, and many times very similar struggles. To go back to Open Books, though, I want to point out something that's very unique about our organization, which is that all of the programs that we have now and the ways that we engage with our communities through the Books Mobile and other events that we show up at really come from. a model that we have developed, which is a community responsive model. When we first began working in Northlandale about five years ago, we convened a roundtable of people, community leaders, parents, people from schools to come together to let us know what were the pain point when it came to literacy. And that's how we have sprung up and done.

different types of programs to address certain needs. We can't address them all, but we do try to address them within our expertise. And that's how new programs get generated. You know, if you hear enough times that, you know, a community really, really wants a place where young people who are like 10 years old to have a place to go. then you start thinking, okay, well, I think this is something we can do, like with our after-school program in North Laundale. So they're all coming from places of community need and also community, like, expression, you know, what they let us know and trust us to do. And that's really important. I'm a little bit, maybe a lot, very averse to. Thinking of myself as like, I'm coming here to save anyone's life. I am not. I'm here to encourage hopefully very meaningful experiences with books, with reading, with stories, and help engage someone's curiosity. Yeah, I love that. I think that's the right attitude to have, right? I think it's the realistic aspect of what your organization is doing. I also love that it's not a top-down approach, you know, flying into a neighborhood saying, this is what you all need here. You're listening to communities and they're different needs, right? Logan Square, North Laundale are different. They're evolving. These neighborhoods are changing. Pils and Westloo. Everything is different based on the half mile, the zip code that you travel. And I think it's important to recognize that and meet people where they are like you guys really are doing. We could dive and talk. more just specifically about all the individual programs. But I think this has been a good little inspiration for people just to discuss a little bit about what you guys do and where you're coming from. And so I just want to mention what we're doing with Block Club Chicago. And thank you so much for letting us partner with you guys at Open Books, because you guys are full steam ahead with your fundraising goals too. But people can donate for every $20. It's a double donation, essentially. You're helping out you guys at Open. books that gets a book to a CPS student and it also helps block clip chicago in our non-profit newsroom and i think there's a real reason why this has been really popular the last couple years paula since we started doing it is so many of our readers are just that they are readers and they feel blessed to have grown up in a world where they were readers or someone inspired them to do it and i think a lot of readers and listeners go well i want to pass that forward and Boy, we couldn't be happier with this partnership. I hope you guys are too because it makes us all feel really good that we're all helping each other out.

Yeah, thank you so much for continuing to partner with us on this. Block Club is such an important part of how we get to know, you know, the rest of our city. It's such a big city. Each unique neighborhood brings something to the table. And, you know, Open Books is working on the west side, southwest side, and we hope to keep contributing to the communities there. All right. Well, keep up the great work that you guys are doing. It must be a huge undertaking. and you guys are doing it and have been for a while now. Paula, thank you for your time. Thank you so much. For more, head to blockclopechicago.org. Hit that donate button. And again, we'd love to get open books up to 2,000 books for CPS students this fall. So you can go to the open books website. I'll link to all this in the episode's show notes. And that direct link for how you can give back to both our newsroom, our non-profit newsroom, and get books into CPS students' hands with just one donation. Until next time, I'm John Hanson. Next podcast scheduled for Thursday or whenever a big story breaks.