EDINBURG, Texas - Many people in South Texas do not realize just how high the level of illiteracy is in the region.
This is the view of Ida Acuña Garza, executive director at South Texas Literacy Coalition (STLC) and author of many children’s books.
“There are many, many people that don't realize the level of illiteracy that we have in this area. The last census that we did said that South Texas - and they considered South Texas anything below San Antonio, (and we are in Deep South Texas - but anyway, South Texas had a 48 percent illiteracy rate,” Acuña said.
“Fifty-two percent could read and write at some level, functional or whatever, and 48 percent could not. And people listen to that, and they'll say, well, what are the schools doing? What's going on?”
Acuña made her comments on a recent STLC podcast.
“It’s really important for parents to know if a child is not reading and grade level three by the time they get to the third grade, then they're seven times less likely to graduate from high school,” Acuña said.
STLC, a nonprofit organization that serves 14 counties, was started by then-Congressman Rubén Hinojosa in 2007. Its mission is to “enhance and enrich the quality of life of the South Texas region with literacy outreach programming through community partnerships that lead to more literate communities.”
Hinojosa started STLC during the 2007 Hispanic Engineering Science Technology Conference. UT-Pan American used to hold HESTEC annually. Hinojosa set up STLC as a means to address rates of illiteracy across Region One – from Laredo to Brownsville, convening a meeting during HESTEC with affiliates from UT-Pan Am, South Texas College, Texas State Technical College, UT-Brownsville, Avance – Rio Grande Valley, Texas Migrant Council and representatives of U.S. Congressmen Henry Cuellar and Solomon Ortiz to institute the purpose of the reading initiative.
During the podcast, Acuña explained what drove Hinojosa to start the initiative.
“I had known the congressman for a while, and his family. And so, he convened a group of community leaders, from nonprofits, from agencies and from other organizations to Region One, and he wanted to talk to us about literacy, reading and writing,” Acuña recalled.
“He was in Congressional District 15. He is very big on education. He said, I have been around the world, different places in this world, visiting with the ministers of education in those countries to study their educational systems. And he went to Beijing, and he went to London. He went all over the place. And one of the places that he went to was New Zealand.
“And everywhere that they would go - I believe there were ten or 12 people in the congressional delegation - they would ask, what is your graduation rate, your high school graduation rate. And keep in mind that at that time, the high school graduation rate in the Rio Grande Valley hovered around 50 percent - that means 50 percent graduated, and 50 percent for whatever reason, didn't.
“And so, in New Zealand, they told him, our graduation rate is 97 percent, and his jaw dropped. He said, how can you do that? And they told him, early reading plus early writing equals school success. And he came back with that idea.
“He started looking and researching the population and the demographics of the 15th Congressional District. And his idea, right off the bat was, take action. Let's take action. What we need to do is we need to get books in the hands of these children. And so, he said, I want to start a nonprofit. This was in 2007, 2008, and it took a couple of years, about a year and a half, to get it started. As they expanded and started looking, and they named it the South Texas Literacy Coalition.”
Acuña said Hinojosa’s drive got her closer to the goal of writing children's books.
“And so, I’ve written a lot of children's books, about 21 books, a lot of them are related to cats and rescued animals. That's how I got affiliated with the South Texas Literacy Coalition, and have been there ever since,” Acuña said.
“We started finding out ways of how to distribute more books, and then we realized we have a region of about 11 to 12 counties. It's grown to about 14 now, but we need to reach out to every single county in the in the region and give away new free books.”
Acuña said her jaw would drop when she visited some places in the region and found that kids had never received a new free book of their very own.
“There's nothing like that face of that child who whose eyes just brighten up when they see that book. And it's, you know, ‘I can keep it?’ Yes. ‘I can take it home?’ Yes, take it home and read it. It's been a really, really a satisfying experience.”
Acuña was asked about the programs STLC offers. She described one of them, called the South Texas Reading Initiative, as a “stellar” program.
“That’s our book distribution program. Book distributions… the research shows they improve vocabulary, they improve reading skills. They improve writing skills. When there is an event, we're there with our table full of books, going from Pre-K, toddler, all the way to high school and adult. And we let children self-select because if you self-select a book, then you're more apt to want to read it.”
Acuña said she wanted to give a shoutout to the Molina Foundation, because they're one of STLC’s great, benefactors.
“We try to have a big variety of books on hand all the time. I see kids saying, I don't like to read, Miss. And I'll say, well, do you like sports? Oh, yeah, I love sports. I said, here's a story about Charles Barkley and his story of how he became a great basketball player. You know who Charles Barkley is? Yes, yes, I know who he is. Well, why don't you take this and read it, read about him, see how he got where he is.”
She then spoke about another important program STLC organizes.
“We also have done a lot of work with Little Free Libraries. Little Free Libraries is a national registered trademark, but we have a little bit of fundraising that goes with that, where if a company or a business or an individual wants to sponsor a Little Free Library, we'll help them acquire it, and within the cost of all of that will provide books for a year for that Little Free Library, making it accessible to kids in the neighborhood, to kids in apartment complexes, to kids who don't have a way to get to the library, to any of the bookstores or whatever, and maybe can't afford it. Again, do you buy a book, or do you buy a gallon of milk? I mean, it's a no brainer. And so those are two of the programs.”
Acuña said STLC likes to work with parents, trying to help them understand the importance of creating a culture of literacy at home.
“I think they know the importance, but they'll say, well, I don't know what to do, or they can't read English. And so, we try to give them strategies to help them, help their kids be successful in school. That's the whole thing. Be engaged. Know what's going on. Be there for your kids. Take them to the library, take them to our festivals, take them to those kinds of things, so that they can begin to see that you know that books are important. So, they'll know that books are important.”
Acuña said STLC puts on summer camps at housing projects. “When we do these programs out in the community, it's all for the promotion of literacy and the importance of reading and writing.”
Acuña added: “It's been proven in the research that by the time they (students) get to the eighth grade, if they can't read or write, well, they have their excuses. School is boring. I'm out of here. I'm not learning anything. I'm out of here. But truly, what they're feeling is terror that the teacher might ask them to read out loud and to do something. They're lost. They're lost because they can’t, they don't have the fluency. They can't read. They haven't been pushed to read. And, you know, I think every child in school should be allowed to select a book that they want to read. It develops you to… you read this book, and it is just like a wow, changed my life, kind of thing.”
Acuña was asked what STLC’s goals are right now and how the group is working towards them? Where do you envision STLC being ten years from now, she was asked.
Acuña responded: “Well, our goals are, we want to extend our services and develop more partnerships in each one of the counties that we serve. We'd like to have more regular visits to the outlying counties, and because we work from Brownsville to Laredo, and so we want to be able to do that. We want to be able to develop some training programs for literacy people in the school districts.
“And in answer to your question about, where do I see it in ten years, in ten years I would like to see the South Texas Literacy Coalition have literacy advocates in every community, partially funded by the county, the city, the school district, whoever, and partly by us and be our contact, our main contact there, and that advocate would be the person who would say, okay, I'm getting these schools together on such and such a date. We're going to have a big festival. I've got some local authors here. I've got the facility. All you need to do is, come and bring books and creating a culture of literacy at home. And I see that happening.”
Acuña continued: “I also see us being able to help more families that have limited resources with English as a second language, ESL classes, and that's kind of another division that will take us into adult education. We’re still working with family literacy but trying to provide… because there's waiting lists of people who want to learn how to read English, and we have books we can teach them with Pre-Kinder and Kinder books, some of the English words that they need.
“And so, I see us expanding into that area and maybe becoming the South Texas Literacy Institute for having different kinds of things, and our goal would be to train those advocates to conduct monthly programs in schools and community centers and wherever and do some book distributions to keep that whole literacy event growing and keep us growing as well.”
