4:00

school. Let's just do this throughout the

4:02

Denver, Colorado area encouraging kids and validating

4:04

them for what they're doing as far

4:06

as reading is concerned. I love this.

4:08

This is part of Jeffco Reads, which

4:10

is an intensive summer literacy program for

4:12

students entering first, second and third grades

4:14

during the 2024-2025 school year. The focus

4:18

is on developing phonomic awareness, phonomic

4:20

skills, and services are available at

4:22

nine schools. Class sizes generally range

4:25

from eight to twelve students and

4:27

teachers are all trained on

4:29

the Orton-Gillingham approach that incorporates a multi-sensory

4:31

approach to learning to read. I don't

4:34

care about that part, but I'm with you because

4:37

I say this all the time to younger

4:39

people like in my life and

4:42

I realize that now everybody has the world's library

4:44

on their phone, right? But when I was a

4:46

kid, Nick, we were allowed to

4:48

go to the library once a week in

4:50

my hometown, okay? And we were allowed to

4:52

check out as many books as we wanted,

4:55

but we had to return them

4:57

all the following week, right? So there was

4:59

this pressure. You got like seven books and

5:01

I would read seven books in seven days and

5:04

it's one of the reasons I'm such a fast

5:06

reader now is because that pressure was there. But

5:08

in my mind, like you look at the library,

5:10

that is a massive box of knowledge and if

5:12

you can read, you can do anything. You can

5:14

accomplish anything if you can read and if you

5:17

can't read, you can probably still accomplish a lot,

5:19

but boy, howdy is it a whole lot harder

5:21

than I thought. So hats off to you, man.

5:23

I think that's wonderful. And if anybody wants me

5:25

to come to read to students or host a

5:27

pizza party, I would love to do it. Absolutely.

5:31

And once again, look, I have individuals

5:33

like my family who went to college

5:35

and we have a number of people who did

5:37

not and some of those individuals don't know how

5:39

to read and I look at them in their

5:42

lives and how their lives had

5:44

not reached a point that they needed to

5:46

because they could not read. So reading is

5:48

so vital, it's so important. When I was

5:50

growing up in the city, right outside of

5:52

our school, there used to be every Thursday

5:55

this bookmobile and I was so excited about

5:57

going to this bookmobile, just checking out. books

5:59

because I knew how important it is and

6:01

I just want to carry forth that message.

6:03

This is my way of giving back to

6:06

any community that I'm a part of. So

6:08

since I live here in Denver, why not

6:10

give back in this way? You know, Nick,

6:12

talking about adults who can't read, I have

6:15

a family member who became an

6:18

adult literacy tutor. And

6:20

so she would teach adults how to

6:22

read. And the oldest person she ever

6:24

taught how to read was like 78

6:26

when he started. Wow.

6:30

And he was a man who had worked

6:32

like hard labor jobs his whole life, you

6:34

know, never, wasn't living in

6:37

poverty because he was a hard worker, but

6:39

he worked really hard for every

6:41

dollar he ever made. And he wanted

6:43

to read the Bible before he died. And

6:45

so she started to, I've got goosebumps right now

6:48

telling this story, but she taught him how to

6:50

read over a period of like three years. And

6:53

then he read the Bible when he was like

6:55

82 years old because he wanted to have that

6:57

for himself. And so I always

6:59

say when you find out

7:01

that someone you love can't read, it's like,

7:03

it's never too late. It's hard, but it's

7:06

never too late. And there are programs out

7:08

there specifically designed to help adults who cannot

7:10

read. But let's prevent that from happening by

7:12

intervening in these early grades and getting these

7:15

kids to be super readers from the very

7:17

get go. Really

7:19

quickly. I know we don't have that much time,

7:21

but my grandfather, because he had to, he was

7:23

pulled out of school and he had to work

7:25

in the time that he was a young man

7:28

and he did not know how to read

7:30

that well. So me being able to say

7:32

that I got a master's degree, I graduated

7:35

from Georgia Tech and I'm now

7:37

pushing kids to kind of read more. For me,

7:39

this is a way to pay homage to my

7:41

grandfather to say, okay, well, here's the thing that

7:43

you were not allowed to do due to the

7:46

circumstances that you were faced with. But now I

7:48

can kind of flip that script and kind of

7:50

change things for a lot of kids. I love

7:52

that. I mean, you know, one of the things

7:56

that people outside of the state of Florida don't

7:58

know is that when Jeb Bush, when Jeb