Share your time to change a child’s life through reading

Every day in HISD, there’s evidence of the generosity of the city we live in — community partners who help spruce up our facilities, honor our educators, and provide greatly needed donations of basic items that many of our youngsters simply can’t afford, such as school supplies.

We’re grateful for every kindness, but there’s something truly special about the gift of time — those people who are willing to invest personal attention to make a difference in the lives of our children.

Today, we launched an effort that is calling on the community to change the lives of 4,000 of our first-graders who simply need someone each week to read with them, read to them, and instill in them the love for reading.

The program is called Read Houston Read, and it’s the community companion piece to HISD’s new districtwide Literacy By 3 movement in the classroom that aims to have every youngster reading on grade level at the end of Grade 3, and to raise older students’ literacy levels.

We’re asking volunteers to donate a half-hour to an hour each week to mentor one or two first-grade youngsters. You can do that in-person at 40 of our campuses, or from a computer at your home or workplace, to link up to other schools where we’ve identified great need among children who have no one to read with them outside the classroom.

As we’ve launched our movement to attack the literacy crisis, I’ve frequently asked people to consider their own experiences with learning to read and to think about what their life would be like had they not learned to read and write with fluency. There’s no facet of education that’s more impactful on our success in school and determining the course of our future than reading.

From the start of Literacy By 3, we’ve said that this is a problem that reaches far beyond the classroom — one that will require support in homes and in the community to solve.

Read Houston Read is your chance to change the life of a child simply by sharing the gift of reading. We hope you’ll become one of the 1,500 volunteers needed, by starting your application process here.