Lee y serás ® (Read and You Will Be) is a national Latino early literacy initiative that empowers and engages families and communities to foster children’s literacy development. By providing research-based, in-culture, and bilingual curricula and materials for families, childcare providers and leaders, the program's goal is to create long-term attitudinal and behavioral change in an effort to help close the education achievement gap. Created by and for the community, the initiative is a collaboration of the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), Scholastic, and the Verizon Foundation.
NCLR has developed a national bilingual early literacy development initiative to equip Latino parents with the information and tools they need to embrace their role as their children’s most important teacher – even before their children enter school – by emphasizing daily literacy activities, regardless of their own literacy levels or English fluency.
Leeyseras.net is the newly redesigned and enriched companion web site for Lee y serás. The site gives parents and caregivers free access to the Lee y serás curriculum that builds on the multi-faceted, strong, inherent traditions of Latino culture which support literacy and learning – storytelling, poetry, and song – and that emphasizes the role that parents play as their children’s first teachers.
The website offers downloadable and printable resources for parents, educators, and childcare providers to help build literacy skills. Its colorful and child-friendly templates, educational games, and interactive activities engage kids in learning and having fun. Educators, community leaders, and researchers are featured on the website’s podcasts and videocasts. The site will help build an online community with visitors posing questions and ideas via the Lee y serás blog.
“The Lee y serás website, with its interactive and bilingual features, is invaluable in our efforts, not only to educate people about the initiative and create an online community to address the early literacy issue, but also to spur increased use of technology within the Latino community,” said Janet Murguía, NCLR President and CEO.
Lee y serás is being implemented by local nonprofit organizations in cities around the country including New York City, Washington, DC , Los Angeles, Dallas, Danbury, Connecticut and San Jose, California. The initiative will launch on December 12 in Chicago and in Miami in early 2007.
