Meet the Book Angel Team

As a classroom teacher I saw the difference in the growth and development of children that had books readily available to them at home and those who did not have books.

I also noticed how the self-esteem of my students increased when able to recognize spoken words of our language in print and then write those words down to construct sentences, letters and reports. To me, there’s nothing nicer and more rewarding than seeing that sparkle in the child’s eyes. Their self-pride and confidence in knowing how to read and how to make sense of printed text. 

Book Angel was created to address illiteracy at an early age. With a mission to help families develop, practice, and maintain strong leaders for life. It is my personal belief that we are all lifelong learners. There is no other way around it. We must have the skills to read and it is our responsibility to slay this Goliath of illiteracy one boy at a time, one girl at a time, with one book at a time. 

“The projection of prison cells ten years from now are based on the third and fourth grade reading scores…” I’ll never forget reading this in my textbook in my first class while working on my Masters Degree at Dallas Baptist University (DBU). I thought this couldn’t possibly be true, I did not believe it, so I conducted my own research and discovered that it was true! Research confirmed according to the US Department of Justice & US Department of Commerce that 30% of inmates on a local level, 40% of inmates at the statewide level, and 50% of inmates on death row have reading deficiencies and did not graduate from high school. You see, in my opinion, the reading deficiencies identified in inmates didn’t start in high school nor middle school; but during their early childhood. 

I’ll never forget the day I was working as a Kindergarten teacher atSagamore Hill Elementary School. Our department, all six of us kindergarten teachers, were called into an emergency conference with our principal; the beginning of the school year assessments were in and our kindergarten scores were at 32% next to the bottom of the district. We were asked, “what are you going to do about this?” You could hear a pin drop. Initially, I thought, “we didn’t do it, school just started two weeks ago.” Then a team member spoke up and said, “well we have no other way to go but up”.  There was a sigh of relief, well we all agreed, and we all worked relentlessly. I sometimes stayed at the school, with my own two children, until close to midnight. I showed up at students' homes to speak with their parents, guardians and siblings to help families understand how to successfully complete class and homework. As a department we turned those statistics around and received an exemplary award and was recognized as one of the top three schools in the district that year. 

Our country cannot continue on this road of 50% of high school students dropping out of high school. The real problem started long before the children entered into high school, rather it starts from birth in their homes. As I see it, children are not being talked to, having conversations in formal English, books are not being read to them, seeing others in the home reading, but mostly books are just not in their homes. Books are not a priority. Parents are not realizing that they are their child’s first teacher, not the school system. Their language has not developed because former English is not spoken in the home. Ongoing, engaging conversations are lacking. The child is not being read to. But this doesn’t have to be that way either. We need to start at the root cause of illiteracy. Let’s put books into the children’s homes in their hands. 

With Book Angel we are doing the work of meeting families and children where they are - we have developed programs and networks that will put books into our children’s hands at an early age (birth), equip parents with the knowledge that they are their child’s first teacher, then equipping them on what and how to take what they have and teach their own children in order for them to be prepared to learn as they enter the classroom. 

We are looking for people like you to help to grow and sustain the work we’ve started so that future generations will be equipped to live responsible and productive lives. What’s in it for us? Our future, our businesses, our political leaders, our educators, our future workforces, our inventors, our technological advances. Our ability to compete globally is now in our hands. 

I was always told by my grandmothers that “you can be anything you want in your life-go ahead and when you get there reach back and grab the others and pull them along”, this is what I was taught and this is what I live by. One must do all that we can now today to fix the problems of illiteracy. After all I have never heard of a child saying that when I grow-up I want to be an inmate. 

Please commit to helping us turn this illiteracy deficit around. 

~Ms. Kathy Hopkins-Davis aka Ms. Kathy