EWU Students Create Kits to Improve Literacy

Spokane County kiddos will know a few more words when they enter kindergarten thanks to an effort by Eastern Washington University students to get new parents interested in reading to their babies.

The Eastern Reading Council, a club with 26 education majors dedicated to promoting literacy in the community, recently adopted a project that provided 100 free literacy kits to parents of newborns at Sacred Heart Medical Center. Club members hope that moms and dads will pick up the brightly colored board books and build a story-time rapport with their little ones.

“This is such a unique project – this early literacy project. We couldn’t believe how quickly it took off,” says Ashley Lepisi, senior lecturer of literacy and advisor for the club.

Lepisi characterizes early literacy numbers as “extremely low right now” and says, “kids are coming into school behind in their literacy skills, more than they ever have before.”

Danielle Jeross, vice president of the Eastern Reading Council, came across research showing that young students are coming to school behind in their reading and language skills because their families aren’t reading to them as infants. This lack of reading compounds up to age 5, creating what has literacy experts are calling a “million-word gap” between children of nonreading versus early-reading families.

Jeross says the breadth of what modern-day researchers found is discouraging.

“What they discovered is a lot of these students coming into the classroom in kindergarten have never been read to by anybody,” Jeross explains. “So, the first time they are ever read a book is by their teacher in kindergarten.”

Jeross doesn’t assume parents are purposely dropping the ball on reading. On the contrary, the 44-year-old Spokane Valley resident has raised and read to five children of her own. She believes most parents want the best for their children; they just may not be aware of the role early literacy plays in a child’s future success.

“We want to educate parents on how they can advocate for their kids and how [reading] is something easy that you can do every day. And, kids love to be read to,” Jeross says.

“It doesn’t need to be a super formal thing. It can just be something that you incorporate every day, but the importance of it, I think, is somehow being missed.”

The research-inspired project Jeross proposed to the club was to devote an annual project they do to creating literacy kits. Each kit would include a developmentally enriching board book paired with an informational brochure with a QR code linked to literacy resources, packaged in a cute bag.

A lot of the education majors have been in classrooms where they see firsthand how literacy deficiencies impact students, Jeross says. Not surprisingly, Lepisi and the club members unanimously approved the project – and the chance to make a difference.

They launched a GoFundMe page and quickly raised enough to purchase 100 children’s books – all with engaging illustrations and just the right amount of words. They now have a Eagle Crowd Funder page as well.

After finding a bookseller that carried several titles they liked, the Eagle educators ordered the books, published the pamphlets and picked up the bags. The kits have 20 different titles, all developmentally appropriate.

Club volunteers gathered in Williamson Hall on June 5 to package everything before making the trip to Sacred Heart to present the kits to hospital staff and take a tour of the Children’s Hospital.

They were met at Sacred Heart by several members of EWU’s philanthropy team who’d previously learned of the project and shared the idea with donors, who were also eager to help.

With the help of philanthropy and dedicated supporters, the project will transition from a one-time annual effort to something that can be offered for years to come.

“The response from the community and from Eastern has been really positive,” says Jeross. “Everybody has been super on board with it.”

Lepisi appreciates the hard work of the Eastern Reading Council board of directors to get this project off the ground.

The club, which also volunteers for literacy nights and “reading buddies” at area schools, is considering presenting free clinics to educate parents about early literacy and expanding the number of kits they provide for the upcoming academic year to serve infants born at other area hospitals and nonprofits with a high need for early literacy materials.

“We are hoping we can make a delivery at least once a year, if not multiple times,” Lepisi says.