On May 12, Parents and school leaders from across Oakland packed the room to celebrate what happens when families and schools work together to improve literacy.
They gathered for FIA’s Lit 4 Literacy Celebration of Learning for the 2025-26 school year to reflect on what worked, share what they learned, and figure out how to keep going in order to raise literacy rates for our Black and Brown students.
The Lit 4 Literacy Celebration of Learning for the 2025-26 school year was a unique moment where families from Franklin Elementary sat alongside families from Allendale. Where principals from Achieve Academy and Cox Elementary listened to parents they had never met before. Where a father from Eritrea and a Cantonese-speaking mom from across the city discovered they were working toward the exact same thing.
Families at the Celebration of Learning
The event used a World Cafe format, in which parents and school leaders rotated among tables to answer different questions.The goal was to have school leaders listen to what parents are taking away from the program and vice versa. Each person drew their response before sharing, a technique meant to activate a different part of the brain and encourage listening over debating.
The representation in the room was special. Franklin graduated 23 parent leaders in its first year (and offered the program in Cantonese). Allendale graduated 17 families across English, Spanish, and Arabic. Achieve Academy reached over 60 families. ASCEND drew more than 80 parents to an academic night. Schools in their third and fourth years in the program, Cox, Lazear, Lodestar, Learning Without Limits, and Lighthouse, showed what sustainability looks like. Manzanita took it further, training last year’s graduates to lead workshops themselves.
But the numbers were not really the point of the celebration, but rather what happens when all our people are in the same room.
Principal Kenyana Booker of Cox Elementary School said, “It was good to hear we are not in this alone.”
“It just speaks volumes when you open up your doors to families and just involve them in their students’ education, like how far they’ll go,” she added.
That sense of solidarity ran through every conversation. Elisa Saavedra, a kindergarten parent at Allendale who started the year not knowing how to explain phonics and ended it working as an early literacy tutor, looked out at the crowd and said: “We are the village for each other. It is not just about my child. All of these children deserve a chance to thrive.”
Elisa (right) at the Celebration of Learning with FIA organizer, Paulina
And the parents in the room were excited to have this village on a grander scale throughout Oakland. They wrote down what they were committing to next. Across the tables, the same spirit showed up again and again. “Keep learning to keep helping our kids.” “Showing up, being vulnerable.” “I am committed to my daughter’s education and for her love of reading.” Parents committed to summer reading, to bringing more families into the program, to helping struggling readers, to learning alongside their children’s teachers. One parent wrote simply: “Continue participating. Help. Share.”
Suzhu Ruan, a Cantonese speaker and parent of a kindergarten student at Franklin Elementary, found the program practical and welcoming. Her child has made big strides in their literacy, not just in ELA but also in math, “especially with word problems,” she said. She now has strategies she can actually use at home. “My child improved a lot,” she said.
Hany Hussen is a father of two students at Franklin Elementary, and is a native of Eritrea who recently immigrated to the United States and settled in Oakland. When he saw the literacy data for Oakland schools, he said it made him angry.
“I could not believe that Oakland schools were this low,” he said. “If the kids are not reading, we need to do something. That is my feeling. I knew I needed to be there at the school.”
After he participated in Lit 4 Literacy and learned strategies he could use at home, his son became one of the best readers in his class. He now reads for at least 30 minutes every day at home.
For Hany, though, it doesn’t stop there. ”My hope is that with our hard work, we can improve literacy in Oakland,” he said. “It starts with our kids, and it is our duty to share what we learned with any parent we meet.”
Families adding their commitments to bettering literacy in Oakland!
