Events for October 9, 2024 - March 6, 2021

The Right to Read shares the stories of an activist, a teacher, and two American families who fight to provide our youngest generation with the most foundational indicator of life-long success: the ability to read. When a child can’t read, their chances of incarceration, homelessness, and unemployment increase. That's why Oakland-based NAACP activist Kareem Weaver believes literacy is one of the greatest civil rights issues of our time and is fighting for better reading instruction. “What good is winning the right to vote if we can’t even read the ballot?” Fed up with the bleak reading scores in his own community, Kareem files a petition with the Oakland Unified School District demanding change. See trailer. Join TRL-DC and IDA-DC as we screen The Right to Read. This is the only free, public, in-person screening of The Right to Read on the Eastern Seaboard. Board members of both TRL-DC and IDA-DC will be available from 1:00 pm to 2:00 pm to discuss the organizations and their work. Please be seated before 2:00 pm, when the screening begins. While tickets are free, The Reading League -DC and International Dyslexia Association - D.C. Capital do take donations.

Did you know that there are over 160 different ways to speak English correctly? While many educators understand that children may come to school speaking different languages, fewer understand that children come to school speaking the same language differently. In the United States’ ever diversifying populations, it is imperative for teachers to connect to and examine the linguistic skills their students bring to the classroom. Given the many ways English can be spoken, it is important for teachers to understand how and why some varieties of English have been more stigmatized than others. How can teachers create more inclusive and effective [...]

Nearly 70 percent of eighth graders scored below “proficient” and, of those, 30 percent scored “below basic” according to the 2022 National Assessment of Education Progress, known as the Nation’s Report Card. We have to do better! As the momentum of science of reading takes hold of our national conversation, the time is now to dial into aligned approaches for adolescents. Join us as experts Dr. Tiffany Mitchell Patterson, Barbara Davidson, and Janise Lane dialogue about approaches to building literacy beyond foundational skills: once phonemic proficiency, decoding, and fluent reading is established- what’s next for a reader? Whether this transition [...]