EXITING AS A MIGHTY TEAM
The bonds strengthened as we reviewed the facts behind the
urgent need for high-quality summer learning experiences:
1. By fth-grade, summer learning loss can leave low-income
students two and a half to three years behind their peers.
2. Two-thirds of students who cannot read prociently by the
end of fourth-grade will end up in jail or on welfare.
3. More than 70 of America’s inmates cannot read above
fourth-grade level.
4. Low-income children typically lose two to three months
of reading skills during the summer months.
And, as we shared and celebrated the success of the Suncoast
Campaign for Grade-Level Reading’s 2018 Suncoast Summer
Book Challenge, we were reminded that together we are not
individuals, instead, we are one mighty team of caring adults
committed to making sure our children experience academic
success. In 2018…
• 4,15 children completed the challenge by reading at
least six books.
• A total of 12,787 books were read.
• 2 of the participating summer locations experienced
no loss of reading skills during the summer.
• of the participating students performed better than
the national average.
Hildy Gottlieb, of Creating the Future, introduced the term
“Collective Enoughness” during her workshops for the Suncoast
Campaign for Grade-Level Reading earlier this year, dening it
as the theory that together we have everything we need. It is only
on our own that we experience scarcity.
During the discussion period, we experienced collective
abundance when we asked how we might further strengthen the
Suncoast Summer Reading Challenge in 201. We were told of
a school in South Sarasota County that didn’t have access to
the school library during the summer.
Quickly, a school district administrator promised to work with the
school to make sure the library would be opened so summer
school educators and students would have access to books,
a librarian from the public libraries pledged to work with the
school to increase access to the public library collection during
the summer, and a teaching artist reported a surplus of books
she’d be happy to share. And so our mighty team went from a
mindset of scarcity to a mindset of abundance.
Our collective abundance also included shared ideas. One of
the women from an area nonprot shared how her attitude about
including reading at their summer camp had changed because
of participating in the Summer Blast Off event.
She said hearing and then acting on the idea of taking children
outside to read had changed “everything.” Now she and the
children look forward to reading as one of the bright spots of
their day. You could see pens moving as others captured that
“great idea.” I imagine many children throughout the Suncoast
region will be “Reading in Nature” this summer.
Still, another participant shared that she had struggled at the
beginning of last summer wondering how she could possibly
add reading to an already packed Summer Camp Schedule. She
explained that her colleague had helped her to feel the personal
responsibility of their children’s success and they “ipped the
notion around” and decided they needed to make reading central
in every activity, including lunch. The children and the summer
staff embraced every opportunity to read. Not only did they
enjoy reading and sharing about their favorite books, but they
also increased reading skills by a month.
The idea of each of us feeling a personal responsibility for
our children’s success connected with the group, with many
voicing an increased commitment to include more children in
the important task of Summer Learning.
We entered as individuals, and exited as a mighty team!