Who cheers for the reader? How we can help our kids win

Published in the Springfield Republican newspaper:

By David Mazor

Take a look around at the high school basketball game and you'll find plenty of parents, relatives, friends, and teachers cheering on the athletes who devote their time and effort to excellence on the court. It's no mystery why. We understand that people perform better with the strong support of a community. The recognition and approval of our families and friends is a marker of success and a strong driver of achievement.

But when a struggling reader rises to the challenge of finishing a book, who cheers? This is far from a rhetorical question. To the contrary, anyone with a stake in the literacy of the next generation – all of us – should see this as a very practical question.

The young people in middle and high school right now are developing the habits that they will carry with them into adulthood, and learning the values that they will pass along to their own children. When we cheer them on and celebrate their achievement at athletic events, we reinforce the effort, teamwork, and determination they show on the court. Is it any less important that we celebrate academic victories?

The research is pretty stark about why we should not only be cheering but making proficiency in reading a top priority among our school-age population. In Massachusetts alone, generally considered near the top of the list nationally when it comes to education, some 43% of third graders read below proficiency. And if we look at the original eleven gateway cities in Massachusetts, mid-sized cities targeted by the Commonwealth in 2011 around closing the gap in education outcomes, the average rate of third graders reading below proficient in these cities is 63%.

The numbers aren't any better nationally, as the Annie E. Casey Foundation reports that 66% of fourth graders in the United States are reading below proficiency. If there was ever a time for a call to action on reading, the fundamental building block for all learning, it is now.

I've learned that creating a supportive culture of reading is an essential and necessary piece of the solution, and is the reason why I started the public charity Reader to Reader, that at least anecdotally is seeing some encouraging progress.

Since 2002, Reader to Reader has been donating books to the poorest schools and libraries across the nation and around the world. We know that students who grow up lacking reading material face an uphill climb later, when reading becomes essential for high school, SAT and ACT, and college itself. Along the way we learned that, without a culture that supports and values reading, there is only so much the books themselves can do.

In 2007, in an effort to improve circulation in a poor, rural high school library, we tried an intervention that seemed so simple: We asked struggling high school readers to choose books to read, then gave copies of those books to college-age reading mentors. We gave each mentor-mentee pair a secure online space to correspond about the book, and we trained the mentors to be friendly, supportive, and encouraging. The results were compelling. Students loved reading with college mentors, and they formed strong bonds beyond the book discussion itself, often asking questions about college life.

Eight years later, that program is called Read, Think, Share, and it has served thousands of young readers. It was part of the school day for more than 1,000 middle and high school students in 2014. The program has proved replicable, having been used in both rural and urban schools. In addition, its growth and scalability have been a direct consequence of its popularity among college students as a way to be involved in the community.

It became clear to us early on that this seemingly simple intervention offered a sophisticated set of benefits to the struggling reader: a role model for the importance of reading, a mentor for guided discussion, and someone to cheer for them when they finish a book. Actually, it gives a student many people to cheer for them, because Read, Think, Share gets classroom teachers, reading specialists, and administrators involved in the program.

There is no single way to overcome the challenges that students face when it comes to reading. Economic circumstances, language barriers, and individual learning differences may all contribute to a student's struggle to read at grade level. But every striving reader needs a cheer, a pat on the back, someone to tell them they have accomplished something worthwhile, and worth taking pride in.

In the end, we get more of what we reward, so cheer for the hardworking athlete who just won the big game. But remember the hardworking student who just scored a big victory by reading a book, and cheer your heart out. America's future success depends on it.

David Mazor is the founding executive director of Reader to Reader, a 501(c)(3) public charity based in Amherst, Massachusetts that is engaging students, teachers and school districts nationally around literacy. In 2011, he was recognized as a Massachusetts Literacy Champion.

Reader to Reader Founder Interviewed on TV's Connecting Point!

Reader to Reader founder David Mazor was recently interviewed on WGBY-TV's Connecting Point. Click here to see the Video.

Honoring Norton Juster

We are very pleased to honor distinguished author Norton Juster for his support of Reader To Reader and his lifetime devotion to literacy. Juster is the first recipient of the Norton Juster Award for Devotion to Literacy. The award will be presented annually.

Juster received a plaque from Reader To Reader founder David Mazor at Sunday’s 19th Annual Children's Illustration Exhibition in Northampton, MA.

The author of the children’s classics The Phantom Toll Booth and The Dot and the Line, Juster was one of the first supporters of Reader To Reader during our earliest days. Over the years he has donated thousands of books from his personal collection and has been a vocal advocate of our cause.

“Reader To Reader is such a simple idea and such a farsighted one – provide books for students of all ages who don’t have them. I can’t think of a worthier endeavor or one that will have a more profound effect,” Juster notes.

And we can't think of a more worthy person to honor than Norton. Three cheers for Norton Juster!

Reader To Reader Profiled in "The Read-Aloud Handbook"

A couple of days ago famed literacy advocate and bestselling author Jim Trelease dropped by to donate hundreds of children’s books. Jim is the author of The Read-Aloud Handbook.

This outstanding book (published by Penguin Books) has sold more than two million copies over the years and is an essential tool for parents as they struggle to raise strong readers in this age of television and videogames. It is divided into two parts: the first half contains the "ways" and "whys" of raising readers; and the last half consists of an annotated bibliography of more than 1,000 children's books. His capsule reviews of children’s books are an invaluable tool for selecting books for your children, grandchildren or classroom.

The sixth and most recent edition included a wonderful profile on the origin of Reader To Reader and Jim Trelease has kindly allowed us to reprint an excerpt from the book.

So, if you ever wondered how it all began…

…we drive east to North Adams, Massachusetts, where one day in 2000, David Mazor was visiting his daughter at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. Mazor had been an independent film distributor for twenty years and now resided in Amherst, the town he grew up in. He’d also been doing some writing on the subject of futurism and now, finished with the subject, he looked around for someone who might be able to use one of the brand new books he’d used in his research. He wondered if the college’s library could use them.

“Absolutely,” declared the librarian. “We haven’t been able to buy a new book in two years because of budget cuts. All the money goes for online periodicals.” And thus was sparked an idea that became a consuming fire in Mazor’s mind.

“If you want books, I’ll get you books,” Mazor to him. And he meant it. “I was living in Amherst, surrounded by all these professors from five colleges--Amherst, Smith, UMass, Hampshire, and Mount Holyoke--people who have more books than they know what to do with,” he explained to me one day. He ended up collecting so many books the college had to send a truck to collect them.

And then one night Mazor thought, if a state college in a state like Massachusetts is short of books, what about elementary and high schools? He “Googled” “poorest county in the poorest state” and came up with Durant, Mississippi (population 3,000, average income $19,600). “I was so excited about the idea, I could barely sleep. In the morning, I call Durant High School and asked if they needed books. The librarian told me they hadn’t been able to buy a book in forty years. All their funds went to repair the building. So when they built the new school in 1960, if they brought over the books from the old school, most are still there and not much has been added. She told me if a kid wanted to read a book on the Apollo mission, it would be impossible in that library.

“Books aren’t like basketball backboards,” Mazor explains. “If the backboard breaks, the school runs out and fixes it because they’ve got a game scheduled in the gym for Friday night. But when a book is lost or damaged, it doesn’t get replaced because there’s nothing coming Friday night that requires it.”

At this point Mazor’s mind was doing something he learned to do back in high school. He grew up in a family of readers, his father a law professor and his mother a social worker, and there were books everywhere. But one book stood out then and still does. It was a little paperback-- Go Up for Glory, the autobiography of basketball great Bill Russell. It transported Mazor from his privileged circumstances in Amherst to Russell’s segregated Louisiana and left an indelible impression. And there was another point in the book, a section in which Russell described his psychological breakthrough--where he started to “visualize” game situations before they happened and then how he would respond in the game. By the 1990’s, this concept would be a staple of sports psychologists.

“Even as a kid, I got the point immediately and it shaped my life,” he recalls. “All these years later, I’m thinking, if that book could make that big an impression on me as a kid, what about the book that’s supposed to bring some kid to the far reaches of the world, the book he’s never going to see because it’s not in his school library. Somewhere there’s a kid who has never seen a Van Gogh or a Michelangelo, but if he reads a biography there’s a chance his life could change. The right book…the right kid.” And all this time, Mazor is doing his Bill Russell thing, visualizing the possibilities.

“I live in this community where we have all these books that no one’s read since junior was in fourth grade. So out to the yard sale go the books on a weekend. If nobody buys them, they get thrown out. It’s like having all these oil wells in your backyard. ‘What a nuisance! How are we going to get rid of all this excess oil?’ Books in affluent homes don’t get reread or worn-out.” Mazor began to network in an area that had as many educators and books per square mile as any place in America. Soon he no longer had to hit the yard sales; cartons were being dropped off at his house and his garage was overflowing.

He now had boxes of books for Durant and was “Googling” through the south, Indian reservations, colleges, high schools and elementaries. Here was a roadmap for his dream. Talking with librarians at various sites, he began to tailor the shipments: “What kinds of books do you need most? Listen, if you find a kid who is interested in a particular subject and you haven’t got a book on it, e-mail me and I’ll get it.” One school asked for books in English and Bengali--he got them!

He was soon supplying ten to fifteen schools around the country, and not just with single shipments. “I realized this was becoming too important to be a hobby. So I sold my business, formed a nonprofit called Reader to Reader, Inc., and Amherst College donated space in the religious life center.” By 2005, he was supplying 160 schools in twenty-seven states from Maine to Mississippi, and he had more than a dozen volunteers cleaning, sorting, and packing--including a retired college admissions officer. A grant from Daimler-Chrysler paid for all his shipping costs, special purchases and wish list for one year. Cash and check donations began to pour in along with books. The local Barnes & Noble asked customers to donate a book when they bought one at Christmastime and it brought in 1,500 books. As of 2006, Reader to Reader had shipped 200,000 books to some of the book-neediest places in America.

Danny Brassell, Robin and Brandon Keefe, Brigid Hubberman, David Mazor--four people who saw things as they were and asked why, four people who dreamed things that never were and asked why not? Forget the debates about cloning dogs and sheep- clone these people and you could change America.

(Copyright 2006 Jim Trelease)

We have grown substantially since this aritice was written, expanding our reach and developing our new mentoring programs. Over two million books later we are still hard at work.

Please note that Danny Brassell, Robin and Brandon Keefe, and Brigid Hubberman mentioned above have all made outstanding contributions in the fight for literacy. Please pick up a copy of The Read-Aloud Handbook to read their inspiring stories.

Reader To Reader Receives Dakin Award

(Excerpted from the Amherst Bulletin)

Where Movers, Shakers Live Up To Reputation

By BEN WILLIAMS

Bulletin Contributing Writer

Published on June 13, 2008

This year's Amherst Area Chamber of Commerce awards presentation was a night for celebrations, socializing and - in keeping with the "Movers and Shakers" theme - belly dancing by some of the town's most prominent citizens.

The celebrations, held June 5 at the Robert Crown Center gymnasium at Hampshire College, started off with a cocktail hour and quickly took on the air of a high school reunion as guests poured in and friends and business colleagues discussed everything from recent political news to the NBA finals, and this year's award recipients. An estimated 400 people packed the hall.

Each recipient had a small display on the side of the room, featuring collages of pictures, various awards and letters from state and national officials, and even a looping video display.

Patty Brandts, executive director of the Chamber, and Cinda Jones, its president, engaged in a comic back-and-forth introducing the award recipients and showcasing the growth of the Chamber, noting that since 1995 the organization has added 300 members, and the awards dinner has quadrupled in attendance.

The two then called each recipient on stage to speak, accompanied by their own theme song.

David Mazor came to the stage to the tune of "You Oughta Be in Pictures," referencing his previous work in the film industry. Mazor received the Dakin Award in Human Services for founding the "Reader To Reader" program, which helps build libraries and get books to poor communities, and has its headquarters at Amherst College.

Mazor was quick to thank his wife and volunteers for their contributions.

"When you do a thing like this it begins as your own dream, and doesn't turn into an organization unless a lot of other people pick up the same dream," said Mazor, who accepted the award "on behalf of all the people involved with Reader To Reader."