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You are sitting in your 8th grade classroom. The teacher calls on you to read out loud for the class. You look down at the book in front of you and you:
[[See a jumble of letters that swim before your eyes]]
[[You read confidently out loud for the class]]When you realize you have no idea what you are supposed to be reading, do you:
[[Make a joke and laugh it off so the teacher will call on someone else]]
[[Stay silent and bury your face in the book]]You smile when you are finished reading. You are confident in your classes and get good grades. When you graduate from high school, you:
[[Head off to a four-year university]]
[[Stay home and work at a local store]]The teacher probably realizes that you are avoiding reading out loud. But somehow you manage to make it through your classes for the rest of middle school and high school. When you graduate,
[[You take a job at the McDonald's down the street]]
[[You find out you're pregnant with your prom date's baby]]You're ashamed of the fact that you can't read the words on the page. However, that is the least of your problems. You're constantly distracted by the fact that:
[[You are always having to work to help support your family]]
[[You are worried where your family will be spending the night]]You attend four years of university to become a teacher. You teach 8th grade English. You have one student who never seems to want to read in class. You:
[[Sit down with them individually and help them read]]
[[Pass it off as someone else's problem]]Despite your literacy abilities, you have decided not to attend college. You:
[[Still enjoy reading and regularly purchase books to read]]
[[Are so busy working that you rarely find time to read]]One day at work your friend from high school approaches you and asks you to pick him up the next day in your car.
[[You agree]]
[[You tell him you'll be busy->You end up working]]You are now a Teen mom and have to juggle working and being a single mom. You do your best to take care of your child and raise them.
(16-19 year old girls at the poverty line and below who struggle with literacy are 6 times more likely to have become teen moms than their peers who are more literate.)You are among one of only a few teachers who notice when their students are really struggling to read and try to help their students break the cycle of illiteracy.Your students end up sneaking their way through school with very low literacy levels. They are among the 20% of high school graduates who don't develop basic reading proficiency before graduation.Despite all your hard work, you still struggle to make enough money to support your family. You are among the 20% of Americans who read below the level needed to earn a living wage.You choose to:
[[Drop out of school->You end up working]]
[[Stay in school->Make a joke and laugh it off so the teacher will call on someone else]]
You are just like many other children who are raised in homelessness. This contributes to reduced literacy and vocabularies, higher dropout rates, and multi-generational cycles of poverty.You are in the minority. (Only 4 in 10 households even buy books in a year).You are just like the 44% of American adults that do not read any books each year. The next day you pick up your friend. When he gets in the car, he has a heavy bag and tells you to drive away quickly.
[[You do what he says]]
[[You are suspicious and tell him to get out of the car]]
You end up working the rest of your working days at McDonalds and struggle to pay rent and feed your family. You end up on welfare and are among the 3 out of 4 people on welfare who can't read.Turns out that your friend robbed a store and you are now an accomplice. You end up in jail for several years. You are among the 3 out of 5 people in American prisons who can't read.
(To determine how many prison beds will be needed in future years, some states actually base part of their projection on how well current elementary students are performing on reading tests).You drive back to work and:
[[Walk in and quit your job]]
[[Go Back into work->You end up working]]You struggle with employment for the rest of your life. Approximately 60% of the nation's employed fall into the two lowest literacy categories.