Two Literacy Coalition board members wrote an article this week in connection with International Literacy Day.  The piece notes that while volunteers and donors “are no substitute for professional teachers and … involved families,” the action of such volunteers and donors offers an important complement – “everyone can help.”

Waiting lists among learners at providers including Junta for Progressive Action, New Haven Reads (for school-age students), and Literacy Volunteers of Greater New Haven (for adults) indicate the strong demand for their services, compared with the services they are currently able to offer.  More volunteers and/or dollars are needed.  For example, New Haven Reads alone — even as it serves 450 children with volunteer tutors — has a waiting list of 250 children seeking tutors.

Though officially there are two more weeks of summer, Labor Day weekend marks the unofficial close of summer, and many schools already began the 2011-12 academic year this past week.  

Late in July, this website posted as news Jeff Smink’s New York Times op-ed on “summer learning loss” as well as (on its resources page) a Rand report, Making Summer Count: How Summer Programs Can Boost Children’s Learning.

Let’s hope more students and families everywhere are using summer to keep up and grow, cognitively in addition to physically, while enjoying a different blend of learning activities.  Best wishes to those students and families, and to educators in schools and beyond, for the new academic year.