Tena Latona took the stage at the 2024 WITS Blackboard Affair earlier this month to address the WITS mission and vision for the future. Read the full speech from the event below.
Tena Latona on WITS Mission & Goals
Literacy is the foundation on which all other learning grows. It is the seed that blossoms into intellectual curiosity, understanding, and expression. Over 33 years, WITS has nurtured this growth for 78,000 students.
If you have supported WITS for any period of time or have mentored in one of our programs, you have played a meaningful role in cultivating a student’s curiosity, deepening their understanding of the world, and helping them grow. Your contributions are invaluable, and we cannot do this without you.
If you are new to WITS tonight, I want you to join our committed community. Throughout the evening, you have heard how WITS has grown to become a vital part of the literacy development of our future leaders. I believe it takes all of us to create opportunities for every student to be literate. What started as two mentors in 1991, has grown to have activated 27,000 mentors over the years.
Maybe one of you in this room is the 27,001st mentor. In fact, on this screen right now you could become a mentor in one of our programs this year.
Every time our students sit side-by-side with a WITS mentor, they engage in one of the most meaningful experiences that make us human: cultivating relationships. These relationships are the resources that foster a love of reading and the development of foundational literacy skills.
It is usually my MO to lean into the data highlighting our success. To tell you that 71% of our students were proficient readers at the end of the school year, compared to only 39% at the beginning. Those results matter. They are foundational to acquiring more complex knowledge and using reading as a tool for discovery. They directly influence the literacy development of a district in which only 31% of students are proficient readers. Our outcomes change lives.
But what I want to focus on tonight is the We. We do this together. We need you, and Chicago’s students need you. That is what being here tonight is about—growth. Your support can put more mentors side by side with students, more books in the hands of blossoming readers, and more books on the shelves of classrooms. By being here tonight, you are not just supporting WITS, but you are directly contributing to the growth of Chicago’s youngest learners and the vital support they need to become proficient readers.
I want you to take a moment right now and imagine how different your life would be if you could not read – if you were one of the 54% of US adults who cannot read complex text like that of a national newspaper or that of the work you read daily.
Would you have the career you currently have? Would you be able to help your child with their homework? Would you be able to read the slide on the screen above me? The ability to read grows from the moment you become part of this world.
Think about all the people and experiences along the way that fostered your love of reading – the teachers that taught you phonics, The Scholastic Book fair where you bought your first book, all the friends that gifted you a book that you absolutely must read, your parents that read to you before bed, or your children you now read to every night.
At WITS, we support all of that. You may be sitting here, thinking, “Am I a reader?”, “I don’t love reading; I don’t read multiple books a year.” Even so, you know that you are a reader because you do it every day without even thinking about it.
You are going to help WITS grow in so many ways tonight. With your support we will:
- Double the number of students we serve in our Kindergarten through fourth-grade programs. We focus on these critical developmental ages to help students build resiliency, curiosity, grit, and confidence in forming peer and adult relationships, setting them on a path to lifelong success.
- Increase the number of classroom libraries we build for teachers across CPS from 100 to 300 by 2028 which is what our teachers have said they need year after year.
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- We want to triple the number of corporations making meaningful, long-term commitments to Chicago neighborhood schools and the literacy development of thousands of students. Many of you in this room have been part of WITS corporate programming for years. For those of you who have not. I encourage you to join your colleagues beside you tonight and become a WITS program partner.
I know that together we can reach these milestones. I am incredibly proud to be the CEO of this organization. I wake up every day and cannot believe that I have the privilege to do this work. I am honored and humbled to lead our staff, who deliver our mission with tenacity and passion daily. I want every WITS staff member to stand right now and be honored by all of us in this room.
Like Principal Lyons said, we want you to join us in changing the lives of our students; I know that being part of our community will change your life as well.
Thank you for being here tonight. Thank you for being a reader. Thank you for believing in our students. Thank you for supporting WITS.
