Co-founder of Mission Lumen, Emilie Rezendes, shares the why behind the game.

My Story

• Did you ever struggle to spell simple words or to read?
• Did the letters on the page ever seem to shift or bounce around a bit?
• Did you learn the “b-e-d” method to determine the difference between a “b” and a “d?”

If your answer to any of those questions was “yes,” then my story might be similar to yours.

The beginning of my life was nothing spectacular or out of the ordinary. I was born into a middle-class family, like many Americans. My mom was a bilingual middle-school teacher at a local school, and my dad worked in and around the tech industry.

As an infant, I was exposed to all sorts of literature – my mom read to me constantly, in both Spanish and English, and letters – magnets on the refrigerator door in multicolored scrambles, soft versions on the floor, and some in the bathtub – were everywhere. You would think a kid that grew up in that kind of environment would have no problem learning to read.

My parents read and talked to me constantly, and as the oldest niece and granddaughter, I had all the attention of the entire family. By my first birthday, I was speaking in full sentences, and loved listening to my mom read books.

By all accounts, my development in the language sector was quite stellar. I was a chatty kid, knew plenty of big words, and could understand most conversations, but my mom began to worry when as we were going through the book, “Teach Your Child to Read In 100 Easy Lessons” and I got stuck around lesson 20.

By 6 years old, it was clear I was having problems as I was still unable to sound out some of the 3-letter words in a short sentence. My mom employed several different curriculums to try to get me up to speed, but suppressed tantrums (on the part of my mother), tear-filled lessons (mine), and continued incomprehension (for both of us) were her only reward.

When I was 8 years old, my mom hired a dyslexia tutor. Although I wasn’t formally diagnosed with dyslexia at that age, my mom had done the research and was certain she knew what the problem was.

After years and years of hard effort, grammar classes, tutoring – both in and out of the public school system – and constant exposure, I eventually prevailed. That isn’t to say I don’t still have problems, but I understand how to work around them – and that is what matters.

As an adult, I have often thought back to the trials I had to go through as I learned how to read, and have wondered if there could have been an easier way.

Maybe my story strikes a chord with you, or maybe it doesn’t. Maybe you have a family member like me, and that’s ok too.

In some ways my struggle learning to read and write was an individual experience; in other ways, it was not. In the U.S alone, 1 in 5 children have dyslexic tendencies.

Think about that for a second. That’s 20% of the population.

These staggering statistics coupled with my own experience – shared by so many people – are what drove me to co-found Mission Lumen, a nonprofit dedicated to aiding student reading and writing comprehension.

Literacy Struggles in the U.S

In the United States today, millions of children are not meeting the basic standards of reading, as an article in The Harvard Gazette noted last year:

• 40% of 4th grade students cannot read at a basic level.
• 1/3 of eighth grade students fail to meet simple reading standards.

And an article from Illinois Policy noted that:

• Nationwide only 31% of students are meeting or exceeding reading standards.

We have a whole blog post talking about 5 possible reasons why illiteracy rates in the United States are rising. You can read that blog post here:  5 Reasons Why U.S. Illiteracy Rates are Rising That No One Reads About.

For some children, a lack of parental or academic support may be the reason. For others, it could be financial instability, mental health related issues, or – as it was in my case – learning disabilities.

For dyslexic students, the problem goes even deeper – only 1 in 20 students with dyslexia are ever diagnosed, and most are not diagnosed until after the critical intervention period has passed, when help would have been most effective.

Before 2nd grade, 90-95% of dyslexic tendencies can be helped through early intervention, as opposed to only 45% in and after 4th grade. I wasn’t diagnosed until 3rd grade, although my mom had been working to help me much earlier.

Whatever the reason – and there are many possibilities, it is clear the United States has a literacy problem, and it is crucial that this problem gets fixed – and fast.

The Implications

Illiteracy does not just affect the individual, but it affects the family, the state, and the nation.

By third grade, literacy proficiency becomes a crucial part of a child’s success, both in school and in their future.

If a child cannot read fluently by the end of 3rd grade, about ½ of the 4th grade curriculum is incomprehensible as students go from “learning to read” to “reading to learn,” therefore predicting their likelihood of graduating high school.

Statistics show that students who don’t finish high school earn less each year and have higher unemployment rates (13% compared to 7%) than students who do finish high school.

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, high-school dropouts cost the economy – on average – about $272,000 more compared to those who completed high school because of “lower tax contributions, higher reliance on Medicaid and Medicare, higher rates of criminal activity, and higher reliance on welfare.”

The list of implications from illiteracy goes on, but it can get depressing, so I will stop there.

A Solution

With the United States in such a crisis and the outcomes of illiteracy so blaringly obvious, my co-founders and I decided to do something about it. The result was Mission Lumen.

Mission Lumen is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to raising the literacy rates in kids – especially teens or other students who may have fallen through the cracks of the public school system.

As a student who might have very easily fallen through the cracks in the system myself – if it hadn’t been for the constant vigilance of my mom – I have a personal interest in helping these students succeed. After all, I had help, too.

We plan on helping students by providing a free Orton-Gillingham based online gaming platform that runs curriculum-based learning adventures that students can play at their own speed and at an individual level. As we talked about in our previous blog post Why Learning Should Be Gamified, learning through games is one of the best ways to keep students engaged, motivated, and challenged.

As a dyslexic student, learning phonics and sentence structure – while vastly important – put me to sleep on a number of occasions. Online gaming, however, with point systems and rewards, would have been the perfect way to keep my brain engaged and kept me from getting discouraged. Help us help students. Visit our website to learn more.