In the Time of COVID-19: Education and Our Neighbors

Emmaus House in the Time of COVID-19: Responding to the Needs of our Neighbors

As we spend time this week in grief and reflection, our daily work continues. (Read Greg Cole’s full statement on current events here.) This week, we launched a new literacy program for rising second and third-grade students at the Barack and Michelle Obama Academy. 

We invite you to read about this program below as you reflect upon the systemic racism and generational poverty that affect so many members of our community.  

At Emmaus House, we stand for justice and equity. Please join us, teach us, stand with us.

Part 3: Education

Three young students from Barack and Michelle Obama Academy in Peoplestown will be among the forty participants in Vision 2020, an online reading program sponsored by Emmaus House this summer. 

Each has a different learning challenge. Each has seen major results from past reading programs.

One student had severe attention issues. Reading online with a paraprofessional calmed him and helped him to concentrate. One was a kindergartner in danger of having to repeat his kindergarten year. Through last summer’s Emmaus House program, he caught up with his class and became a top student in first grade. The third presented behavior challenges. When his teacher discovered that he enjoyed superhero books and could read at two grade levels above his age, she encouraged him and his behavior improved.

The progress made by the boys shows how much difference a good reading program can make, especially when progress can be lost over the summer due to no follow-up and no access to new reading material, an occurrence known as the “summer slide.” 

Emmaus House will offer Vision 2020 from June 1 to July 10 to rising 2nd and 3rd graders. The goal is to provide reading enrichment to children who otherwise might have no opportunity to continue academic work over the summer.

The online program is a COVID-19 response to replace the past in-person summer Children’s Defense Fund Freedom Schools® program sponsored by Emmaus House. “We had to do something safe for the neighborhood and safe for the children,” said Ann Fowler, director of education services at Emmaus House.

Learning to read is life-changing for a child, said Brittany Young, reading specialist at the Obama Academy and one of the teachers who will be working with Vision 2020 this summer. “When students begin reading, they can make a connection with something that interests them,” she said. “They also develop vocabulary and storytelling skills. It increases their creativity.”

Teachers will do interest inventories at the beginning of the program to learn what kind of books each child might enjoy most, she said. 

Besides daily online reading with mentors, all the children will receive a book of their choice each Friday. To provide the books, Emmaus House is partnering with Little Shop of Stories, an independent bookstore in downtown Decatur. 

“The work of providing books to all children is urgent,” said Fowler of Emmaus House.

Research shows that students who have books in their homes perform better academically, she said. She cited a 2001 study that found that the ratio of books to children in middle-income neighborhoods is thirteen books per child. In low-income neighborhoods, the ratio is one book for 300 children. Another study found that giving children twelve books to take home over the summer resulted in gains equal to summer school for lower-income children, and had twice the impact of summer school for the poorest of those children. Research also shows that academic gains are larger when children are allowed to select their own books.

“This book gap is easier to erase than the more complex barriers involved in poverty,” Fowler said.

A home full of books makes a difference beyond literacy, she said. Researchers found a correlation between reading and understanding of mathematical concepts, and even between reading and the ability to use technology to communicate.

Teachers are concerned that the reading gap has widened during seclusion as a result of COVID-19. Whereas children in higher-income neighborhoods are spending time in homes with books and computers, children from lower-income families are less likely to have those resources.

Veteran teacher Shirley Freeman, who will be working with the Emmaus House  program this summer, saw the effects reading can make in the kindergartener who was almost retained. He came from a home with several children and a mother who worked long hours. “It was a case of older children looking after younger children,” Freeman said. 

Last summer at Freedom School, the “light bulb went on” and the little boy realized he could read.

“He just grabbed books and took off,” she said. “He really blossomed.”

The result was a good student and a happy teacher.

“That’s the reward,” Freeman said. “That makes everything else worth it.”

TO SUPPORT VISION 2020 WITH BOOKS, you can buy a gift card from Little Shop of Stories and indicate Emmaus House as the recipient. Select “store pick up” and Little Shop of Stories will hold the cards for Emmaus House. Donations of any amount are welcome, but $10 will buy a paperback and $15 will buy a hardback. Additionally, St. Martin’s Episcopal Church will provide a bag of groceries with the book delivery to each participating family.