When I started Right To Read in 2020, the world was in the middle of a pandemic. Schools were closed. Children were home. And the headlines were saying what those of us in literacy education already knew — that the reading gap was widening. That the children who were already behind were falling further. That a crisis we had been sounding the alarm about for years was finally impossible to ignore.

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I had spent over 17 years in classrooms, intervention rooms, and IEP meetings watching children be failed by a system that was never designed to catch them. Brilliant children. Creative children. Children full of potential who were being labeled "behavior problems" and "low performers" when what they actually needed was someone to teach them how words work.

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I watched frustration turn into disengagement. Disengagement turn into push-out. And push-out turn into outcomes that should never be acceptable — dropout, poverty, incarceration. A cycle that doesn't stop with one child. It moves through families. Through generations.

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I built Right To Read because I couldn't keep watching and waiting. Because the system had shown me — repeatedly and clearly — where its priorities were. And because I believed then, as I believe now, that community has always been the answer when institutions fall short.

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This work is not just about reading. It never has been. It is about what becomes possible when a child can access the world through words. It is about interrupting cycles that were never inevitable. It is about every child who deserves to walk into a classroom and feel like they belong there.

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That is why we exist. That is why we fight. And that is why we need you.

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Tenesha Jedkins Smith, M.Ed. LDT, CALT

Founder | Executive Director