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Mostly Cloudy Helping to close educational gap among children
The Long Island Multicultural Book Fair made a triumphant return to Baldwin last Saturday, and Ama Yawson, co-founder of the publishing group Milestales, used it to help tackle the racial achievement gap, which was widened by the pandemic.
The book fair returned to Baldwin for its fifth year, but for the first time since 2019 — right before the pandemic shutdown occurred. Community members gathered at the Long Island Rail Road station to celebrate diverse children’s literature, as authors read their books out loud and families had the chance to meet the authors and illustrators.
According to NewAmerica.org, “there is disparity in representation of characters from different racial, ethnic and gender groups,” which is why Yawson wanted to start this event. She said young people are still dealing with the racial achievement gap in reading scores, and she hoped that through events like this one, she can help close that gap.
“Unfortunately, we’re dealing with an educational crisis right now in so many respects,” Yawson said. “So pre-pandemic, we had what was called the ‘word gap’ or the ‘educational gap,’ in which children of poor backgrounds, and very often children of minority backgrounds, were behind in reading and education.”
Yawson explained that the word gap exists partly because certain groups of children are not hearing enough words per day. She added that children in wealthier families would be exposed to more conversations with their parents and, therefore, learn new things compared to children in poorer families. Yawson said the poorer child may sit in front of a television all the time or be watched by a relative who may not know English that well, which would hamper the child’s education.
“A child can spend a lot of time watching TV, or the child is at a daycare center that may not be high quality, and they let the child watch TV all day,” Yawson said. “And so this creates a word gap.”
This problem was prominent before the pandemic, Yawson said, but now the word gap has widened even more. She said that children became “less exposed” to new language and words that they would have picked up at places like a library. According to Yawson, the word game and education gap is even more “exacerbated.”
“So now, we have a situation where the language exposure has actually decreased,” Yawson said. “And virtual learning is not up to par and has taken a toll on families.”
Yawson added that it is so important to host a book fair so that children can discover new language. At the event, children met authors, talked with various people and read books. Also, the event partnered with Cedarmore Farms in Freeport, which provided fresh foods for children to eat while they read their books — all in the name of promoting literacy.
“So what sparked this event was that my company actually partnered with Cedarmore in various educational capacities before,” Yawson said. “And so they approached me and said that they were having a farmer’s market event and wanted to have some type of artistry involved.”
After brainstorming with Cedarmore, Yawson said she believed that a book fair would add a great element to the farmer’s market.
She said she wanted this to be a fun occasion and by attracting more than 100 children and their relatives to previous events, she felt like she was able to accomplish that.
After the book fair took a hiatus from 2020 to 2022, Yawson said she is “so grateful” for this event to come back this year.
