Seppi says her son began making progress.<\/p>\n
A former English teacher, Seppi wanted to understand what had changed. The following summer, she went through the center\u2019s training herself, hoping she could share what she learned with his school. <\/p>\n
Instead, she discovered how much she hadn\u2019t known about the way children learn to read. She found herself thinking about students she had taught who might have had dyslexia, too.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hadn\u2019t known how to help them at all,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
Her son Jonathan is now 37 and has a master\u2019s degree from Carnegie Mellon University. Seppi is still helping children learn to read as a private tutor and past president of the Pennsylvania branch of the International Dyslexia Association<\/a>.<\/p>\n Her family\u2019s experience points to a question that brought educators, librarians, advocates and community leaders together at Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh\u2019s second annual Children\u2019s Literacy Summit<\/a>, held Oct. 24 at CLP-Homewood: What does it take for every child to have the opportunity to become a reader?<\/p>\n The answer, speakers said, involves books and bedtime stories, as well as trained teachers, specialized instruction and a network of people ready to help when reading doesn\u2019t come easily.<\/p>\n Turning conversation into community<\/p>\n Last year\u2019s inaugural summit asked, \u201cWhose Job Is Children\u2019s Literacy?\u201d This year\u2019s gathering took that question a step further: \u201cWhose Job Is It Now? Moving Children\u2019s Literacy from Conversation to Community.\u201d<\/p>\n Following the first summit, Carnegie Library began meeting regularly with literacy-focused organizations across the region, forming a collective called the Literacy Leaders. The Grable Foundation<\/a> has supported the collaboration and the summit, CLP President and Director Andrew Medlar said in his welcome remarks.<\/p>\n Medlar described a network that reaches children far beyond the library. <\/p>\n The Allegheny County Library Association<\/a> has installed book vending machines at the county jail and Family Division, he said, while Literacy Pittsburgh<\/a> has expanded its ERAS tutoring program to additional schools.<\/p>\n Reach Out and Read<\/a> distributed more than 6,000 books in Western Pennsylvania over the past year, Medlar said. United Way of Southwestern Pennsylvania\u2019s<\/a> spring Big Book Drop helped get more than 40,000 books into children\u2019s hands before summer break.<\/p>\n CLP has also added a reading specialist and expanded its partnership with UPMC Magee-Womens Hospital to share selections from the library\u2019s annual Best Books for Babies<\/a> list with new parents.<\/p>\n The work can be measured in books and library cards, but Medlar also pointed to smaller moments: a librarian connecting a child with a story about a favorite animal, a teacher offering extra time or a grown-up reading a beloved book for the tenth time.<\/p>\n \u201cWe may each play a different role in a child\u2019s life,\u201d he said, \u201cbut we can all help create those moments.\u201d<\/p>\n More than a book<\/p>\n Collin Diedrich <\/a>knows how complicated those moments can become for a child who struggles to read. The co-founder and executive director of the Learning Disabilities Association (LDA) of Pennsylvania<\/a>\u00a0has dyslexia and other learning disabilities. <\/p>\n As a student, he says, he dreaded reading aloud. His parents could afford a special education tutor who worked with him from approximately third grade through high school. Only later did he begin to understand how much access to that help depended on his family\u2019s circumstances.<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t understand that my privilege allowed me to get all this extra support that wasn\u2019t available to most kids,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Diedrich went on to earn a doctorate in molecular virology and microbiology, and conduct HIV and tuberculosis research in Cape Town, South Africa. He began writing and speaking about being a scientist with learning disabilities, challenging the belief that difficulty with reading means a person isn\u2019t smart.<\/p>\n After returning to Pittsburgh, he looked for ways to volunteer with children with learning disabilities and ADHD. He later co-founded the Learning Disabilities Association of Pennsylvania to make reading support accessible to families who might otherwise be unable to afford it.<\/p>\n Diedrich says the organization offers group early literacy instruction for children reading at kindergarten through second-grade levels, along with individualized intervention for people who need more intensive support. This early literacy program operates at libraries, schools and community organizations.<\/p>\n Instruction is free for children from lower-income households, he says, with sliding-scale fees for families above the organization\u2019s income thresholds. The intervention program also serves adults.<\/p>\n Getting books to children is essential, Diedrich says, and some readers will need additional instruction to make use of them. That\u2019s why he values bringing literacy organizations together.<\/p>\n \u201cReading intervention is our goal, and we provide that support, but it costs money,\u201d he says. \u201cYou also need books to read.\u201d<\/p>\n What struggling readers need adults to understand<\/p>\n Seppi says that it is easy for adults to misunderstand a child who is having difficulty. Some children become quiet and try to hide, she says. Others make classmates laugh to draw attention away from their struggles. Still others act out, and some children may decide that \u201cit\u2019s better to be the bad kid than the dumb kid.\u201d<\/p>\n All of this could conceal how much effort a child is already putting in. <\/p>\n At the summit, Seppi led a shortened version of a dyslexia simulation designed to give participants a sense of the challenges some children experience with reading, spelling and writing.<\/p>\n The activities made tasks like decoding words and taking notes more difficult. Seppi says participants came away recognizing how much energy such work can demand. <\/p>\n \u201cThey realized that struggling to read is emotionally draining as well as intellectually hard,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n For families wondering whether a child needs additional help, Seppi suggests paying attention to persistent difficulty learning letters and their sounds, or trouble putting those sounds together. A child might understand a story when someone reads it aloud, but become distressed when asked to read independently.<\/p>\n But Diedrich cautions parents against trying to diagnose a learning disability based on a few signs. Instead, he suggests talking with a child\u2019s teacher and reaching out to organizations such as LDA of Pennsylvania, which he says can help families connect with evaluators.<\/p>\n Even getting that far can be difficult. Parents may worry about stigma, he says, and evaluations can be expensive. Support groups can give families a place to ask questions while they consider next steps.<\/p>\n Making room for stories<\/p>\n At home, Diedrich suggests showing children all the ways adults read throughout the day, whether they\u2019re following a recipe, checking a sports schedule or looking something up online. <\/p>\n Invite kids to help, he says, and continue reading books aloud together as they grow.<\/p>\n Seppi encourages parents to follow a child\u2019s interests. That might mean sharing a favorite book, finding a story the child wants to read independently or listening to an audiobook. <\/p>\n Audiobooks can give children access to stories and vocabulary beyond what they can yet read on their own, she says. Knowing what a word means can make it easier to recognize when it has been decoded correctly.<\/p>\n Seppi offers her own experience learning German as an example: She can pronounce some words, she says, but sounding them out doesn\u2019t necessarily mean she understands them.<\/p>\n For younger children, she suggests playing with rhymes and the sounds in words. Parents might ask a child to break \u201chaystack\u201d into two words, then try putting words together again. If a child gets stuck on a word they may be able to sound out, Seppi suggests starting gently (\u201cWhat\u2019s the first sound here?\u201d), then asking what else they notice about the word.<\/p>\n And if taking turns reading together has become upsetting, families can take turns reading just one sentence or read aloud at the same time. When frustration takes over, a break can help. \u201cYou can\u2019t make it all awful,\u201d Seppi says.<\/p>\n Finding help together<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/clp-literacy-summit-2026-presentation-300x206.jpeg\"\/)
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<\/a>Author Anne Wynter was among the speakers at this year\u2019s CLP Children\u2019s Literacy Summit.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/clp-literacy-summit-2026-breakout-session-300x182.jpeg\"\/)
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<\/a>A breakout session on Trusted Messager Training was presented by the United Way of Southwestern Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n