Erla Sagg: A Reader to Reader Success Story!

"I feel like the Reader to Reader - Read, Think, Share Program was the start of something I like to call 'multidimensional  consciousness,'" says Erla Sagg, an alum of our Read, Think, Share program in Navajo, New Mexico. Erla is now membership coordinator for the National American Indian Housing Council (NAIHC).

Erla is an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation. Erla comes from the Hardrock and Big Mountain community on the Arizona side of the Navajo Nation. She represents the Ta'neeszahnii (Tangle clan) and is born for the Bitahnii (Folded arms clan). Her maternal grandfathers are of the Naakai Dine'e (wandering people) and paternal grandfathers are the Ashihii (Salt clan).

"Before I was in the Reader to Reader's - Read, Think, Share Program, I was unaware of the world outside of the classroom and the small community of Navajo, New Mexico, Sagg explains. "I had general knowledge on topics like the Holocaust and genocide occurring in Africa, because these were brought up in history class. I was not aware that my own community, and country had and continues to also be a place of genocide and systematic oppression. It wasn't until I read Indian Killer by Sherman Alexie that I had an awakening of reality. This was one of the first books I picked up while in the program, and I remember sitting in the library, realizing that many of us were facing the same thing. Some of us were having identity crises, facing federal coercion, fighting assimilation, unknowingly angered about generational traumas, or simply not doing anything because we had feelings of exclusion from our communities. Aside from the mysterious murders and underlying behavioral health issues the lead character might've had, this book helped me realize that we can be the answer to change. This program showed me that books had the answers to the questions I had about why people were the way they were. Joining the Reader to Reader's program, gave me the ability to critically comprehend societal behaviors and atrocities happening to American Indian people, while many of my peers were interested in the latest shoes and mainstream music.

After attending Navajo Pine High school, I began reading: Crazy Horse and Custer by Stephen E. Ambrose; God is Red by Vine Deloria Jr.; and Ojibwe Warrior by Dennis Banks. Some of these books were sent to me, from the Reader to Reader Program after leaving Navajo Pine. I can remember feeling the encouragement and motivation when I returned home for the weekend, and I had a big box of books waiting for me. If it wasn't for that box of books that had been provided to me, I feel that I would have slipped slowly into madness. I wanted to become part of the change! At 14 years of age, I wanted to become part of Indigenous survivance.

Today, my bookshelves hold books from authors like Gregory Cajete and Raymond Austin. If it wasn't for this program, I don't know where I would be in life."

After her freshman year at Navajo Pine High School, Erla attended Greyhills Academy High School in Tuba City, Arizona. In May of 2011, she graduated at the top of her class with a 3.98 GPA. Erla received a Presidential Scholarship from Utah State University, where she graduated with an Associates of Science and a Certificate of Completion for the License of Practical Nursing Program. After deciding to change her major from Environmental Chemistry, Erla was accepted to the Native American Studies Department at the University of New Mexico.

In the early parts of 2018, Erla was one of thirteen participants in the Native American Political Leadership Program with George Washington University. She was also one of two Richard M. Milanovich Fellows for this program. In December of 2018, Erla graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Native American Studies with a focus in Leadership and Building Native Nations and a minor in Psychology.

Today, Erla is a graduate student at UNM with a focus in Indigenous Leadership, Self-Determination, and Sustainable Community Building. With a 4.0 GPA, Erla is also working as a Membership Coordinator with the National American Indian Housing Council (NAIHC) located in Washington, DC. NAIHC is a not-for-profit organization which seeks to effectively and efficiently promote and support American Indians, Alaska Native and native Hawaiians in their self-determined goal to provide culturally relevant and quality affordable housing for native people. Along with eight other team members, Erla provides tribes and Tribally Designated Housing Entities with up-to-date information on grants, trainings, and federal policies such as the Native American Housing and Self-Determination Act (NAHASDA). NAIHC also provides advocacy efforts for increased allocation funding like Indian Housing Block Grant, Veterans Affairs, and Indian Community Development Block Grant funding.

Erla's goal is to attend Stanford University Law School. She also wishes to pursue a career deeply focused with federal Indian policy and creating change tribal youth across Indian country.

It’s Reader to Reader’s Field Trip Season!

Students from Alfred G. Zanetti Montessori Magnet School, in Springfield, Massachusetts, helped us kick off the start of our annual field trips to Reader to Reader.

Each spring, students that are participating in our Read, Think, Share mentoring program spend a day exploring college life at Amherst College, the home of Reader to Reader.

The students tour the campus, including exploring the Beneski Museum of Natural History, one of New England's largest natural history museums.

They are escorted on their campus tour by their Read, Think, Share college student reading mentors.

A fun day is had by all.

A Big Thank You to Community Bank!

Reader to Reader would like to thank Community Bank, N.A. for their sponsorship of our Read, Think, Share program in Springfield, Massachusetts.

Thanks to Community Bank’s generous support, 46 children at Alice Beal Elementary are reading and corresponding daily with our college reading mentors.

The innovative Read, Think, Share mentoring program partners students from low-income backgrounds with college student mentors. The students and mentors read books and discuss them online in a secure forum. Students have the opportunity to select books from a wide range of titles that suit their personal interests. The program not only provides the students with positive feedback and academic support, but also time spent corresponding with strong role models.

Editorial: Reader to Reader Exports Hope with Books

Thursday, November 10, 2016
Daily Hampshire Gazette

Page by page, an Amherst nonprofit continues to fight educational inequality by shipping free books to disadvantaged communities.

But there is more to Reader to Reader than tons of paper. This novel program, founded by David Mazor more than a decade ago, exports hope.

Yes, hope, that thing with feathers, as Emily Dickinson once ventured. “That perches in the soul - / And sings the tune without the words - / And never stops - at all -”

While best known for its book donations, Reader to Reader works to advance literacy – and the economic hope literacy ignites – in impoverished communities beyond this country’s borders.

Mazor’s program also serves as a lifeline to intrepid students from the Five Colleges inspired to design and launch their own global literacy projects.

Books remain the coin of the realm. Starting late last month, Reader to Reader made its latest book donation to schools in Native American communities in the Southwest — one of its oldest efforts.

Schools in New Mexico and Arizona are receiving more than 52,000 books worth half a million dollars. The program’s simple goal is to get books into the hands of children in underfunded schools, believing that reading lights fires of curiosity that, once kindled, cannot be extinguished.

As Reader to Reader has grown, new corporate relationships enable it to get many more books into schools like the Gallup-McKinley County Public Schools in Gallup, New Mexico, and the Central Consolidated Schools in Shiprock, New Mexico. Both are receiving books in the latest shipment, along with the Ganado Unified School District in Ganado, Arizona, the Hopi School District in Keams Canyon, Arizona, and the Tuba City Unified School District in Tuba City, Arizona.

The program crossed the 50,000-volume mark on this donation thanks in part to its ties to the Scholastic Corp., Pioneer Valley Press, Soho Press and other publishers.

A library staffer in the Gallup-McKinley schools, which are getting 14,000 books, says the program’s impact on students will be “profound.”

Separately, more than 21,000 volumes are headed to the Navajo Nation Library in Window Rock, Arizona. Reader to Reader is also shipping books to a Native American community that’s been in the news – the Standing Rock Reservation, whose members are fighting a pipeline project and reached out to the Amherst program for help to improve the library at a South Dakota campus of Sitting Bull College.

Not surprisingly, there’s been mission creep in the Reader to Reader ranks for years. Students from local colleges continue to serve as tutors and reading mentors. Many do that here in the Valley, as several did with the Summer of Power program for five weeks this year in Holyoke by helping students improve their English language skills. The program says 200 Five Colleges students, working in Massachusetts and New Mexico, are mentoring 1,400 low-income young readers.

Further afield, Reader to Reader continues to assist efforts, sometimes through its Springboard Program, to advance literacy in places like Managua, Nicaragua, Arani, Bolivia, and Santa Cruz, Costa Rica. The Springboard Program helps college students do global good.

They include the four students from Amherst College who’ve been improving a three-room public library in the village of Santa Cruz.

Reader to Reader does seem like “the thing that never stops,” as Dickinson wrote.

In that same poem, she said of hope: “I’ve heard it in the chillest land - / And on the strangest Sea - / Yet - never - in Extremity, / It asked a crumb - of me.”

For information on how to support Reader to Reader’s efforts, and perhaps provide some financial crumbs, visit readertoreader.org.

Over 200 Mentors in Reader to Reader's Read, Think, Share Program

There are already more than 200 students from seven different colleges work as reading mentors in our Read, Think, Share program this year, helping students in middle school and high school become more confident readers and writers.

Here, eight of our newest mentors from Amherst College take part in a follow-up training to help them build their own skills at working with students.

The college students are working with 1,400 low-income adolescents in Massachusetts and New Mexico.

Reader to Reader Key Part of Holyoke's Summer of Power

This summer, Reader to Reader was pleased to once again be part of Summer of Power (SoP) at Holyoke High School. SoP is a summer enrichment program that allows incoming ELL (English Language Learners) 9th graders to work on their English oral and written skills.

Ten Reader to Reader tutors hailing from UMass, Amherst College, Hampshire College, and Smith College assisted in the classrooms as students practiced their English, often through expressing their identities and values.

Over the five weeks of the program, it was wonderful establishing a rapport with the students and watching the friendships grow among them!

Reader to Reader's Dennis Quinn Named 2016 Mass Literacy Champion

Dennis Quinn of the Amherst-based literacy organization Reader to Reader has been named a Mass Literacy Champion by Mass Literacy.

Mass Literacy, a non-profit organization supporting literacy education in Massachusetts, recently announced the six winners of the 2016 Mass Literacy Champions Awards. 

The program publicly recognizes and rewards Massachusetts' educators who have shown exceptional commitment and results through their work in literacy education.

Award winners will receive a $1000 grant for program development and a professionally produced video to promote the work of their organization valued at $1000.

Mass Literacy selected six Mass Literacy Champions, including Springfield resident Dennis Quinn. Dennis is the Director of Mentoring Programs and supervises the Read, Think, Share program for Reader to Reader, which is based in Amherst on the campus of Amherst College.

Read, Think, Share is a web-based initiative that partners students from low-income backgrounds with college student mentors, to improve reading and writing skills and foster a love of reading.

Dennis has grown the program from serving 22 students to over 1,300 in West Springfield, Holyoke, Chicopee and surrounding towns.

For his Mass Literacy Grant project, Quinn will bring the Read, Think, Share program to a brand new school, serving 30 more students. The grant covers all books, supplies and training for the program.

The Mass Literacy Champions Awards program enables literacy providers to share their most promising practices with their peers and serve as ambassadors for literacy. 

Each 2016 Mass Literacy Champion will complete an innovative literacy project that will be shared with the statewide literacy community.  Seventy-six Mass Literacy Champions have been recognized since 2003, and together they represent the diverse literacy community that makes Massachusetts a national leader in education.

Read, Think, Share Results Presented at Literacy Essentials Conference

Last weekend, our Director of Mentoring Programs, Dennis Quinn, presented results from our Read, Think, Share mentoring program at the 9th annual Literacy Essentials Conference at Central Connecticut State University.

Students working with Read, Think, Share mentors report increases in reading persistence and comprehension, along with stronger writing skills.  Most importantly, the program makes reading and writing a daily habit.

One student Dennis featured in the poster said, “This class has improved my reading. It has made me more interested in books, and I've been reading a lot more because of this class. I've read about six books and am still reading more.”

It's all made possible by our amazing crew of mentors!

Newspaper Features Read, Think, Share Mentoring Program

Amherst-based Reader to Reader takes literacy efforts online with help of Five College students

Special to The Republican By Cori Urba

on March 25, 2015 

AMHERST - Boguslaw Janiszewski, a second-year student at Hampshire College studying English literature, creative writing and philosophy, has never met any of the public school students he mentors in reading: It's done online.

"But I know first hand that, by exciting these individuals and by reading with them what they want to read - freely - the students we work with are able to offer themselves fully to a book or piece of text and truly digest the material, whether emotional or semantic," he says.

Janiszewski is a mentor in the Reader to Reader program.

"It's really interesting because by just pointing out certain aspects or perspectives in a text, these kids really do just exhibit their love for books and a premature possibility of studying in the field of academia by really asking and answering some hard-ball, mind-bending questions," he added.

Housed in the Cadigan Center for Religious Life on the campus of Amherst College, Reader to Reader involved in 2014 more than 135 Pioneer Valley college students in mentoring more than 1,000 mostly middle-school students in its Read, Think, Share literacy mentoring program that engaged public schools in the region as well as a school on a Navajo Reservation in New Mexico.

Read, Think, Share is an innovative literacy program that engages college students who read the same book with a middle-school student and share an online conversation about the book through daily blogs between mentor and student. The mentoring program aims to increase a love for reading among students and to increase their reading proficiency and their emotional investment in attending school.

Click here to read the rest of the article.

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.

Chestnut Middle School Students Visits Reader to Reader

Students from Chestnut Middle School in Springfield, Massachusetts, came to Reader to Reader for an all-day field trip.

The students participate in our Read, Think, Share mentoring program, and each day they read books and correspond online with our college student reading mentors.

On the field trip, the middle school students got to meet their reading mentors and tour the Amherst College campus together.

It’s never too early to start sparking interest in college! 

At the end of the field trip, we gave them lots of books to take home. Some couldn't wait...

Meet Sylvia Ngo!

This fall we are pleased to welcome Sylvia Ngo as our new Mentor Support Coordinator. As an undergraduate, Sylvia was a mentor for our Read, Think, Share mentoring program for three years and enjoyed the opportunity to share her love for reading with youth. She quickly grew to be a staunch advocate for Reader to Reader’s far-flung efforts to promote literacy and the impact of these efforts, as well as the lifelong friendships she has formed with fellow mentors and staff convinced her stay on to play a role in making Reader to Reader as meaningful an experience for other mentors as it has been for her.

As the 2014-15 Highland Street AmeriCorps Ambassador of Mentoring, Sylvia draws from her background to recruit, train, and supervise and support the ever-growing number of mentors.

Sylvia graduated from Amherst College in 2014 with a B.A. in anthropology. She spent much of undergraduate years digging into the histories of the campus museums and studying the colonial histories and contemporary issues that surround and politicize museums, ownership of the past, representations of cultures, and the production of knowledge.

During her free time she enjoyed hanging out at the Reader to Reader office and sharing college history and paleontological wonders with visitors of all ages at the natural history museum.

Reading Mentors Return!

After a summer of rest, research, interning, and other adventures, our mentors have returned and the office is once again buzzing with their chatter, enthusiasm, and energy. The year is already off to a busy start with mentors dropping in daily to pick up books almost as fast as we’re putting them out, voracious readers that they are. We had a great turnout at the Mentor Welcome Back Shindig last Thursday, thrown to celebrate our mentors’ return and to say thank you for all the work they do to make a difference. Amid refreshments and conversations we had the chance to catch up with old faces and chat with some of the new ones who were thinking about joining our team.

Interviews for this year’s batch of new mentors are well underway and we even have a few on board already. We are so excited to have them and to have the opportunity to meet such vibrant and passionate students who are, to our delight, fellow book-lovers and lifelong readers themselves. With the forums set to start up again in the next week, this year is already promising to be another exciting one and we can’t until the program is back in full swing and we’ve filled all our vacant mentor positions.

Video Highlights of ELL Summer of Power

Reader to Reader's Katy Moonan put together this great short video of our mentors in the ELL Summer of Power at Holyoke High School.

MassMutual Supports Read, Think, Share Program

A very special thank you to MassMutual for their generous support of the Read, Think, Share mentoring program.

Congratulations to Sylvia Ngo!

Congratulations to Sylvia Ngo, who will be joining our staff this July. 

Sylvia will be our 2014-2015 AmeriCorps VISTA fellow through the Mass Mentoring Partnership's Ambassador of Mentoring host program.

5th Graders Try Out Campus Life

35 students from the 5th grade at Memorial Elementary in West Springfield, Massachusetts joined us at Reader to reader 's home at Amherst College to meet their mentors in the Read, Think, Share program and spend the day seeing what life is like on a college campus.

In perfect spring weather and with mentors leading the way, the students toured the campus, full of questions about what happens in each building and how they could go to Amherst College.  A guided tour of the college's natural history museum included a close-up look at dinosaur bones and petrified wood.  But the highlight of the trip appeared to be the opportunity to eat lunch in a college cafeteria -- side by side with college students.

Each student ended the day by choosing a book from our collection to take home for summer reading.

We are so grateful to Memorial for being such a great partner, to the kids for being such wonderful guests, and to our incredible sponsor United Bank for making the program possible!

Working with schools on the Navajo and Hopi Nations

During a week-long visit to both the Navajo Nation and Hopi Nation, Reader to Reader's executive director David Mazor met with school officials from a host of schools across the 27,000 square-mile region.

One of the schools new to Reader to Reader is Nizhoni Accelerated Academy in Tuba City, Arizona, a town of 8,000 in the Painted Dessert area on the western end of the Navajo Nation.

Tuba City has 49% unemployment and one-third of its residents do not have electricity or running water in their homes.

The alternative school, which is a public school in the Tuba City Unified School District, is headed by principal Henry Henderson. 

Mr. Henderson was previously the principal at Navajo Pine High School in Navajo, New Mexico.

  

Reader to Reader has a decade-long partnership with Navajo Pine, including having brought a group of Navajo students to Amherst, Massachusetts on a trip chaperoned by Mr. Henderson.

"We are so pleased to work with Mr. Henderson once again to boost the resources of the Nizhoni Accelerated Academy," David Mazor said. "We look forward to greatly increasing the number of books available for their students, and we also hope to involve their students in our Read, Think. Share Mentoring Program."

Reader to Reader's Navajo outreach work is funded through the generous support of the Fordham Street Foundation, the Hiatt Family Foundation, and Jean and Lynn Miller.

Comcast Sponsors Read, Think Share Program

We are delighted to announce that Comcast is now a sponsor for our online literacy intervention program!

Read, Think, Share is a classroom-based program coupled with online mentoring which serves struggling readers and designed to foster a love of reading, improve literacy skills, reduce behavior problems, and reduce drop-out rates. In 2013, we served nearly 1,000 students grades 5-12 in western Massachusetts

.

Comcast joins an illustrious list of our sponsors including the Amelia Peabody Foundation, the Hiatt Family Foundation, the Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts, the Fordham Street Foundation, the Beveridge Family Foundation, and many individual contributors.

Comcast is a strong supporter of access to technology and online learning for low-income students. Recently, Comcast announced that they have made their Internet Essentials program a permanent opportunity for low-income families. In its first two and a half years, Internet Essentials has connected more than 1.2 million low-income Americans (that’s 300,000 families!) to the power of the Internet at home.
 

Thanks to Comcast, eligible low-income students and their families in Comcast service areas (Massachusetts) will continue to be able to benefit from America's largest broadband adoption program providing affordable Internet service, discounted computers, and free digital literacy training. You can learn more about Internet Essentials fromComcast at http://www.internetessentials.com/.

A Night of Roses and Fun! Mentor Appreciation Night 2014

Sylvia Ngo, a Reader to Reader mentor with four years of mentoring under her belt, shares her impressions of a recent mentor appreciation event. In the picture (L to R): Sylvia Ngo, Megan Duff, Ashley Hall, and Danielle Trevino.

On Monday, January 27, 2014, Reader to Reader hosted a Mentor Appreciation Night, promising mentors a fun study break after a hectic first few days of classes. In attendance were head honchos Kat Libby, Dennis Quinn, Rebecca Cubells, and a revolving door of mentors. There was delicious cake, hot cider, hot chocolate, and best of all, camaraderie. Arriving mentors were greeted with cheerful hellos, glad you could make it, and a human scavenger hunt. In order to complete the scavenger hunt, mentors had to ask around and collect the names of fellow mentors to whom the facts listed on the sheet applied, like “who’s missing an organ” or “who saw the original Book of Kells.” The stumper of the evening: find someone who has never eaten at McDonald’s. We could not.

The evening ended with a speech from Dennis, who thanked the mentors for their hard work and for the difference they made in the lives of students. Soon to be graduating mentors were honored with special shout-outs: each senior mentor present was called up to the stage, bestowed with a lively and apt title —such as Duckling Extraordinaire, Deputy Queen of the Garage, or Official Revolutionary— and a single red rose. Between the cakes, the much appreciated hot drinks, the great company, and the heartfelt recognition, there was, indeed, much appreciation shown to the mentors.

Mentor Appreciation Night was made possible by a grant from the Mass Mentoring Partnership.