The Read Me Project

A bell rings, ending recess at Alisal Community School, and a line of 11 fourth-graders come inside to find seats in a circle of chairs.

Rafael Hernandez, program director of the Read to Me Project, takes a seat with a book titled Carlos Likes Counting in his hand.

“Hola, como están hoy?” Hernandez asks the kids. “Who’s been reading to their little brothers and sisters?”

Hands raise high in hopes of getting called. Nobody in the circle is shy.

“Sometimes my baby brother bites my hand when I try to read to him,” a boy says, giggling.

Teeth marks are a small price to pay for lifting literacy by encouraging students to make reading a regular activity at home. Read to Me was founded in 2011 by Barbara Greenway, a former speech and language specialist for the Alisal Unified School District who has worked in schools in East Salinas and South County for nearly 20 years.

At the beginning of each school year, kindergarten teachers would call Greenway complaining that students struggled to keep up with lessons on reading, counting, even naming colors.

“These children didn’t have disorders, they were just a bit behind,” Greenway says. “I was frustrated seeing them constantly struggling, failing and pushed into remedial classes.”

Eighty percent of human brain development happens before age 5, according to the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University. Students in the Read to Me Project read to younger siblings between 6 months and 5 years old.

Read to Me serves 96 classrooms with 800 students from fourth to sixth grade. The nonprofit estimates there are 400 classrooms in the county in need of service – which they’re hoping to reach with help from Monterey County Gives!

Participating classrooms get a bin of children’s books that students can check out. At the end of the school year, students receive a bag of books so they can keep reading through summer.

Back at Alisal Community School, Hernandez gives tips on reading to young kids such as speaking in different voices and pointing at pictures. “I wasn’t really able to speak English until I was 4,” he tells an attentive circle. “We would tell stories through pictures, like look at this loco gato with his bicicleta.”

He checks the time, realizing the session is about to end, and congratulates the kids on their progress.

“Ya nos vamos tan pronto,” a girl says, protesting. “Done already?”