“It’s all about the hug.”

Those words spoken by Dr. Lori Severino describe a moment of exultation and appreciation that she and one of her prior students experienced after six months of lessons to improve literacy.

“She was a senior in Upper Darby High School,” said Severino, who has worked in several public schools as a special-education teacher instructing reading to dyslexic students. “She had a reputation of being a tough girl who knew how defend herself. She had a baby, too, and when she came to me, she spent the first few weeks cursing me out.”

Severino said that high school students who are tested to be at kindergarten and first grade reading levels are embarrassed and even angry that they can’t read, and do not want others to know. Adding to their embarrassment can be the frustration of being diagnosed as having dyslexia, which is an inability to process letters into sounds that make words.

“It took her a while to understand and get involved in the process,” Severino said. “She never raised her hand to participate in a literacy lesson until one day when she did raise her hand and she said, ‘I want to read.’ Sometime after the class, she saw me and gave me a big hug. That’s why we teach. It’s to realize the success of our students.”

Severino said that she retired after 25 years of teaching but she remains a strong advocate for children’s literacy, which she sees as a “social justice” that should be offered to every child no matter their family’s income.

“It’s a national crisis,” she said.

The National Literacy Institute reports that in 2024, 21% of American adults are illiterate and 54% of adults have a literacy level of a sixth grader. The report states that over 70% of the adult population cannot process informational at a high school graduate level. The national illiteracy rate has been a significant consequence of urban poverty, and those who cannot read often turn to a life of crime and drugs.

Severino, a Wilson Dyslexia Therapist, will be a member of a panel on Thursday at Drexel University’s Science of Reading Day. She will share comments with Harvey Hubbell, maker of the documentary “Hopeville: How to Win the Reading Wars” as well as other top educators in the field. The Wilson program seeks to improve sight word knowledge, vocabulary and oral fluency development.

Her primary role now is no longer with the students.

“We are a group that teaches the teachers,” she said.

One of the main components of teaching teachers to teach students with below grade level reading deficiencies is to demonstrate how the brain works, first with a dyslexic child and then, after an immersion into the program, how the brain shows improvement with word comprehension.

“Reading is like riding a bike,” Severino said. “Once you learn the words on the page, the brain holds onto them so that you can recognize them whenever you see them again.”

She claims that the whole language method to reading and writing in the 1990s has set back national literacy skill levels.

“The whole language approach ignored the fundamental teaching of grammar, spelling and structure so that the student could just express ideas in any way he or she wanted to,” Severino said. “We know that doesn’t work to communicate clear ideas. Reading is a discipline that requires rules and structure.”

Dyslexia causes a significant challenge for reading and writing, including difficulty hearing and manipulating individual sounds, and difficulty matching those sounds to letters. Research has proved that children who struggle to read will face many lifelong frustrations and obstacles while trying to understand the complexities of the world of information in which they live.

Severino has committed her post-career time and effort toward Credentials Unlimited, an initiative she co-founded that offers instructional courses for teachers of reading, as she works to share her knowledge so that new waves of instructors can try to wipe out child literacy in America.

She only needed that one “hug” moment from the many successful student stories she has experienced over her long career in education.

“It’s a giant forward when you feel the joy in one of your students after she’s become a functional reader,” Severino said. “It’s all about the hug.”