Emily Baker - Success By 6

Honors Forum II: September 10, 2012

For starters, let me just say that I was completely blown away when I found out that Emily Baker, Director of Success By 6, is only twenty-three years old! Obviously, this lady is pretty impressive. As I listened to Ms. Baker speak about Success By 6, she impressed me even more.

Success By 6 is an early childhood initiative program of United Way that strives to provide appropriate early childhood education. Now to some, this may not seem like a very big deal. I mean, how much do children actually learn in the earliest years of life? Well, let me enlighten you with a few mind-blowing statistics:

• The early years of life, before age 6, offer a crucial window of opportunity to establish a foundation for success in school and life.

• 90% percent of our brain development occurs by age 6. This is true for all children, no matter where they grow up.  But children growing up in poverty often have very different early learning experiences than their peers.

• Research shows that by age 3, a child from a professional family has had 30 million more words spoken to him or her than a child from a family living in poverty. This lack of early learning experiences negatively impacts brain development. As a result, disadvantaged children come to school almost two years behind their peers in pre-reading skills, and most never catch up.

Now, from a student who attended a rural elementary, middle, and high school, I definitely understand how big of an impact that reading skills have on a student's ability to succeed. Many of the people I went to elementary school with were not very strong readers. Unfortunately, my school never really took the initiative to help these students catch up and strengthen their reading skills. So as they barely progressed on to middle school, and eventually high school, school was always just a little bit harder for them. Most of these students did not walk across the football field with me at my high school graduation. That, is absolutely heartbreaking.

I believe that what Success By 6 is striving to accomplish is outstanding; however, I was disappointed to find out that only one person has signed up to volunteer with Success By 6. That is all the more reason for me to volunteer! 

I'm so excited about my upcoming volunteer opportunities, and I can't wait to see just where they will lead me.

Always, Kalee