About

Whenever my mother's youngest brother used to visit, he would pull the sports page out of the paper and hand it to me. When he discovered I could read it to him, I was two years old.

Years later, when learning about the "Reading Wars" and the ongoing controversy in reading education after COVID, I had an epiphany:

Sometimes the simplest actions create the greatest progress. 

I'm Lisa Diop, nee Randolph, and I write under the name Lisa Randolph Diop. I'm the founder of HelpRead and creator of its Read-With-Me Rhymes Series. It's designed to help children read before they start school.

I was motivated by recent concerns about the ineffectiveness of reading curriculum introduced after my own elementary school days. And which, after I read about the methods involved, made me feel genuinely sad for the children affected. Children, many well past first grade, who had to admit to their parents, some of them tearfully, that they couldn't read.*

I was also informed by my experience as an early reader, and of the other early readers I encountered in my little-girlhood. I observed through our cohort that early reading builds a strong foundation for spelling, vocabulary, critical thinking, and more. Skills necessary to become an advanced reader, making early readers more likely to excel at all school subjects at the highest level.

When I read the statistic that 40% of children** learn to read by being read to, and without phonics, it rang true. I grew up with friends and cousins who could read at ages 3, 4 and 5. Fellow first graders who started school as readers.

Some had parents who went to college ... nurses, government workers, teachers and school superintendents. 

Some were working class like my own parents ... a maid and a warehouseman. 

Others were poor, some of them living in rough-and-tumble circumstances, craving books as an escape. (Think Oprah.)

Like my old Virginny maiden name (who says that anymore?), these diverse backgrounds reflect where I grew up: Alexandria, Virginia, in historic Old Town. Through my father, a transplant from the southern part of the state, I was born a descendant of founding father Peyton Randolph ... though didn't learn this until after I graduated Oberlin College.

Could I have referred to Thomas Jefferson as "Cousin Tom" on all those tours I gave of George Washington's hangouts ... for absolutely no money? (Yes, I was a volunteer ... a youth member of the city's commission for the nation's bicentennial. And yes, I'm probably older than you.)

Living close to DC, the center of the nation's government, surrounded by technology hubs, I daily encounter people with demanding jobs.

Also, people with side hustles ... sometimes several. The area cost of living is the 7th highest in the world.*** Above Los Angeles, Seattle and Chicago. Exceeded in the U.S. only by New York, San Francisco and Boston.

So many people ... challenged to find the time their parents did to foster an environment of learning in the home. And less able to afford tutors, with the ever-rising cost of living: the same catalyst increasing the urgency for their children to excel, just to fulfill basic needs and modest wants as adults.

And at a time when, with our underfunded public education systems, the schools truly can't do it all.

HelpRead is here to help. Because when a child becomes an early reader, there's less need to worry about them performing at their grade level. Typically, they'll be working beyond it.

Early reading stimulates interest and skills in the arts, mathematics, the sciences ... and beyond. It also fosters better behavior and greater maturity.

Becoming an early reader is truly the most beneficial thing that can happen to nurture a child's success through all stages of life.

Let us help a child ... or an adult ... in your life learn to read.

* https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story/

**https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/03/11/phonics-schools-students-read-learn/

***https://wtop.com/business-finance/2024/08/where-the-dc-metro-ranks-among-10-most-expensive-cities-for-cost-of-living/