“Reading Takes Children into a World of Possibilities” – A Conversation with Planning Your Success
What does it take to help a child succeed? According to Krystal Jones and Virginia Easton, Executive Director and Early Childhood Coordinator of Chicago nonprofit Planning Your Success (PYS), reading plays a key role in a child’s success in school and life.
Founded in Chicago’s Austin neighborhood, Planning Your Success provides academic support, tutoring, and financial assistance as well as mentoring, counseling, and enrichments for at-risk youth and their families. In this conversation, we discuss the ingredients that go into ensuring all children can access the opportunities they need to reach their potential.
PYS is a recipient of the 2024 Let’s Get Children Reading Grant, a Worldreader grant opportunity that supports community-based organizations, schools, and other learning institutions in getting children to read.
Thank you for speaking with us today. Can you tell us about your community?
Krystal: We serve children as young as 3 and their families. Many families bring older siblings or cousins, and it’s interesting to see how sometimes, it’s the child leading their parent, getting excited and confident about learning. Because many of the children we support are underprivileged, 95% of our programs are free for families – money is a big hurdle, the biggest for some, preventing many families from accessing events and opportunities that could enrich their lives in our community.
Krystal: A big focus of our work in our community is about exposure. Kids don’t know what they don’t know, and even a small thing like reading a book takes them into a world of possibilities. Learning about other people, learning about themselves, and knowing that there’s more to life than what they see.
Virginia: And when it comes to exposure, foundation is key. We want to expose children to learning opportunities and resources as early as possible, showing them the many paths available to them. When we start younger, it’s easier to foster their success later on in their journey, when they’re in high school or college. That’s why we created our early childhood component, to help children build a foundation for success early in life.
What does it mean to help a child plan their success?
Virginia: We teach children how to be resource seekers. We want them to know that there are options available to them because when you don’t think you have options, you just accept what’s in front of you and don’t strive for more. Not because you don’t want to, but because you can’t see anything differently.
Krystal: Community, Faith, Education and Consistency are the primary pillars for Planning Your Success. We started out within our church (located in the Austin neighborhood in Chicago), serving the local congregation, and then expanded to the rest of our community in Austin. We then extended our programs to the South side of Chicago. Finally we said, why not open our services to the whole city? We want every child to have the opportunity to succeed through their education.
Krystal: A big part of Faith is finding yourself, understanding your identity and your purpose in life early on, and pursuing them. And I want to give you a practical example for Consistency. We’ve been here for 20 years now. And because we’ve been consistent in supporting our community, we have former students who received one of our scholarships over 15 years ago now sending their children to our programs.
How has the Let’s Get Children Reading Grant and the BookSmart app impacted your work?
Krystal: The grant has been a catalyst to connect more with our community, and I believe some of the readers are letting others know about the program. We received a good response from parents and children on BookSmart, I can see that more and more people are reading, and sharing weekly books has generated engagement. Ultimately, we aim to open our own school but historically, most of our donations have come from within our community. The grant has helped us get more eyes on our program and has been a great springboard to understand that things can be done.
Sometimes we need other people to encourage us, chime in to pull out the best in us. In other words, helping us plan our success.
Virginia Easton, Planning Your Success
Meet the readers
Philip Jones Jr is in 1st grade at Western Trails Elementary School and started reading on BookSmart at the end of Kindergarten. His dad says that while Philip Jones Jr started out being comfortable with simple two-syllable words only, he’s now become an independent reader and loves reading on his own. He currently has an IEP, needing additional help in his studies, but with consistent reading on the BookSmart app, his standardized scores have improved and he is now approaching the 1st-grade reading level.
I like to set the weekly goal in the app and see (my son) surpass it. Choosing the avatar is a cool add-on especially because he’s into animals. He uses BookSmart once or twice a week and prefers the app over a physical book.
Philip Jones Sr, dad of Philip Jones Jr
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