Imagine being a parent who does not believe they have the capacity to help their kindergartener learn to read. Or a second-grade teacher who wishes she could motivate a family to surface from chronic absenteeism. Or the librarian of a local library stocked with new resources for emerging readers, but whose community is unaware of the free help waiting around the corner.
Adults in these situations feel powerless, isolated, or hopeless in the face of the national literacy crisis. In 2025, the National Center for Education Statistics reported that approximately 21 percent of adults in the US are low literacy and 54 percent read below a sixth-grade level. The report also showed that 64 percent of 4th graders were not reading at grade level.
Reading is fundamental to education. Recently, in The Atlantic, Rose Horowitch posited in her article “The End of Reading Is Here” that students (and those who care for or teach them) increasingly perceive reading as a barrier to acquiring, constructing, analyzing, or sharing knowledge.
Creating Welcoming Learning Environments with Dogs
Trust is essential to creating a space where children feel comfortable learning. However, time is often a barrier to building trust, interconnectedness, and belonging across formal and informal learning environments. Academic enrichment experiences that occur both in and out of school, like SitStayRead’s canine-assisted literacy programs, can be helpful in encouraging a space conducive to learning.
Sweet, cuddly dogs motivate folks of all ages to show up. Everyone becomes a bit more human in the presence of a dog, and loneliness often dissipates. Reading, writing, and reading one’s own writing with dogs can give a child a sense of ownership and confidence about their budding literacy.
The 23-year-old Chicago nonprofit, a 2014 Make It Better Foundation Philanthropy Award winner, brings K-2nd grade programs to classrooms where 90 percent or more households are low-income, and literacy lags are significant. In the same neighborhoods, through trusted community partners such as BUILDChicago, Enlace, New Moms, and VOCEL, SitStayRead staff and volunteer Book Buddies and Dog Teams model simple, easy-to-replicate ways to create language-rich home environments through games, discourse, and shared reading.
Improving Literacy Through Partnerships
SitStayRead’s ongoing partnership with Chicago Public Library has helped introduce families of emerging readers to resources like Jump into Reading, Lánzate hacia la lectura, and the 81 Club. As part of a large coalition of community literacy partners, SitStayRead’s nomadic model allows it to adapt as the local literacy ecosystem evolves.
The latest tome from Dana Suskind, MD, Human Raised: Nurturing Connection, Curiosity & Lifelong Learning in the Age of AI, offers a hopeful vision for a more literate and less lonely future. Enrichment programs that position human connection, and in the case of SitStayRead, canine-human bonding, as a central motivator can help students and the adults who care for and teach them to enter a daunting new era grounded and gritty, fostering resilience and joy as fundamental tools for lifelong learning.
One persistent and hopeful second grader wrote on his program feedback survey this spring, “SitStayRead will live in my brain forever. See you at the library, Honey!”
*Honey is a certified reading assistance dog.
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How to Help
SitStayRead advances children’s literacy and builds confidence in young readers by using an engaging curriculum incorporating social-emotional learning accompanied by certified reading assistance dogs. They annually provide more than 1,800 young Chicago students with focused attention and engaging opportunities to acquire and practice foundational reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills.
Deirdre Harrison joined SitStayRead as an Interim Executive Director in March 2024, and agreed to take on the role of Executive Director the following year. She brings over 30 years of leadership experience in the nonprofit education, cultural, and healing sectors. She has collaboratively led long- and short-term turnaround efforts, surpassing revenue goals, building strong partnerships, and fostering effective systems and teams. Recent nonprofit consulting clients include NAMIChicago, Young, Black + Lit, Gateway to Learning, World Forum for Acoustic Ecology, AACM’s Avreeayl Ra Amen, Eighth Blackbird, Civitas Ensemble, and MacArthur-funded shared development office project Creative Partners.
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