Illiteracy in the US: Education starts here!

When I refer to education "Beginning Here" it sounds like a vague statement. Not so. The reason is literacy begins any place a child is. Let me explain.
It begins in the home first. We now know children can begin to recognize letters and sounds or what we educators call, "letter, sound recognition" at an extremely early age. As young as two in some cases (note not all cases). Next, and very quickly after letter sound recognition occurs, they can often begin to recognize "sight words, or high frequency words." These are words such as, "and, the, I, a , to, an, you," etc. Children are able to do this because these sounds and words are used again and again. They hear and see them every place and delight when they recognize what they are.
From there it is ideal for children to begin pre-school, Head Startand and go on to kindergarten. The scientific data and observations about children who experience early literacy beginnings demonstrates they have higher success rates in school.
I know first hand what it is to have a very bad elementary beginning, as I had no early home or kindergarten learning, there was no one practicing the alphabet with me or even reading me any stories or books. Reading was not something that was nurtured in my home. Consequently, in the fourth grade it was discovered, after years of faking my way through, I could not read. It was so horrible for me I finally dropped out of school before I even completed the 9 th grade. Children who are that far behind, unless an intense "Individualized Learning Plan" is put in place and acted upon, never catch up. They begin planing ways of dropping out as they can not stand the degradation, constant, unending, daily
struggle school is for them.
Now we ask what happens to the adults who have never learned to read? What happens to the more than 30 million Americans who are functionally illiterate? The answer is we continue to create learning centers. We act with the utmost compassion. We work as volunteers and actively createing environments and programs where people feel safe and accepted even though they can not read. We treat the situation as if it were anything else needing immediate attention and compassionate intervention.
We do things such as I am doing with all my children's books. I know the reality of illiteracy in our homes. I understand why there is failure many times as teachers send home reading books for the students to sit down and read with their parents. I saw these little assignments fail over and over in the schools in which I was a principal. I personally experienced this during my entire elementary school experience. Things being sent home to houses where the parents can not read or speak English. This type of thing sets everyone, from the student, to the parent, to the teacher up for failure. We must do our own homework as educators before we randomly send home assignments or books to be read. We must know our students and their homes.
My answer to this is I am writing and developing a full line of children's books with audio books. The students can take the books home, adults can be asked to spend 15 minutes each day reading along with their children using the audio book along with the book first. Everyone gets to see the words, hear the words and the story. After a few times they all become able to read together.
To make the audio books special, with an upscale feel, there are original songs written by composer, Maynard Williams and the narrations, with character voices, are beautifully recorded by former BBC presenter and voice-over artist, Paul Mackenzie from Nottinghamshire, England.
There are lesson guides for teachers and parents as well. These guides take the books and their text one step further. The Lesson Guides help adults expand on what is being read by crossing curriculum. This means the materials in the Lesson Guides are carefully developed by myself and a wonderful biologist, Dr. Kathleen Farquharson to expand on the contents fo the books. We show, in the guides, how to turn activities into the materials children are tested on in the elementary schools. We do this by aligning the guides to the National Standard's of Learning in areas of, science, language arts, history, geography, art, music, etc. These guides make it easy for home schoolers, classroom teachers or any family who enjoys doing a few extra activities with their children.
The fight against illiteracy in our country is awareness. That is the first remedial move to solving any great problem. Remember, "Education starts Here!"