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Jennifer Wells-Jackson reads aloud from a James Baldwin story on WNHH FM.
Listen to Jennifer Wells-Jackson tell the story of Plato’s cave, and you’ll understand why she devotes her days to reading to New Haven schoolchildren.You may also be inspired to volunteer an hour this coming week along with others to pick up a book in a public school classroom as part of New Haven’s version of World Read Aloud Day.
Wells-Jackson is the reading coach at Bishop Woods School. She and other coaches are helping organize the Feb. 1 Read Aloud Day by scheduling volunteers from throughout town to come into classrooms to read a book to kids. (To sign up to read, email one of the coaches listed in the chart at the bottom of this story.)
Reading opened Wells-Jackson’s world at a young age. She has made opening up the next generation’s world her professional mission.
She grew up on Truman Street in the 1980s and ‘90s, when violent drug gangs made it one of the most dangerous stretches of the city. She found she could travel beyond that world in books. Especially after she brought a concern to her mom.
She was in second grade at the time.
“I’m scared,” she told her mom.
“What’s wrong?” her mom asked her.
“Every single time I read, I get these pictures in my head. I think there’s something wrong.”
“Babe,” her mom told her, “that’s what’s supposed to happen.”
Wells-Jackson didn’t stop from then on. She got into Norfolk State, a historically black university in Virginia. In her sophomore year, she read Plato’s famous allegory of the cave in The Republic. The 2,400-year-old text had a modern-day resonance for Jackson.
“It speaks about people being in a cave and looking at these shadows on the wall and believing these shadows were reality. Every now and then someone would escape and come back [and say:] ‘This is not reality! Come on!’ And try to bring someone out. And no one wanted to do that.
“That was exactly the life I was living. I remember feeling like I was looking at the images on the wall as a Truman Street girl. I remember saying to myself, ‘Am I ever going to get out of this?’ Looking at those images, I thought: Teen pregnancy. HIV/AIDS. All kinds of drugs. That was my reality.
“But I broke away. And I ran out of the cave. I went to college. And I gained knowledge.”
And, like the escapee from the cave, she needed to go back.
Wells-Jackson thought about a remark then-mayor John Daniels had made at her Wilbur Cross High School graduation. He urged the students to return to New Haven after graduation and make a difference.
“I decided to come back to New Haven. I said, ‘OK, I’m going to run into this cave and try to convince other people that [what they might see on the street] is not your reality.’”
She did that first as a classroom teacher, at Helene Grant and Fair Haven schools. For the past 14 years, she has worked full-time as a literacy instructional coach, part of a team working to make New Haven into “the city that reads.”
Wells-Jackson discussed that quest along with another coach, Quinnipiac School’s Robyn Sweet, and Lauren Canalori, a district-wide reading supervisor, on an episode of WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven.” They read aloud from books, discussed the school district’s progress on raising reading scores, and urged listeners to help make this year’s Read Aloud Day the best yet.
Click on or download the above audio file or the Facebook Live video below for the full interview with Jennifer Wells-Jackson, Robyn Sweet and Lauren Canalori on “Dateline New Haven.”
