WE FACILITATE SAFE LEARNING EXPERIENCES
Literacy is the gateway to building skills in core academic subjects. Gained early, it breaks the cycles of poverty and abuse and replaces them with cycles of hope, empowerment and success. Our long term goal is to bring all children to the grade level by third grade. We believe this will be done one community at a time with leaders from that community who claim ownership.
We start with a person who cares enough about the children in their community to act. Next, we identify a facility to bring the students. This facility can be a preschool, a church, or a combination of both. Then we train the volunteers to play the learning games the children need.
Why Churches?
They all qualify as non-profit organizations
They usually aren’t using their facility after school or during the weekday
They are already part of the community
Why Non-Profit Organizations?
Grade-level reading has gathered the support of many nonprofit organizations across this country. If you have a community that needs this support then chances are good we can find a local non-profit to fund the effort.
Our vision is our mission
The Rocket Phonics Foundation’s mission is to save lives one reader at a time.
Our organization focuses on closing the reading achievement gap through the use of the Rocket Phonics reading program.
Our Story
When our daughter was in third grade we were called in to talk to her teacher. “Dr. Guffanti did you know your daughter is reading at twelfth grade level?”, she said.
Both my wife and I were shocked. Three years earlier Stephanie had refused to learn to read. I created a series of games with her that got her reading and here we were three years later. The story would have ended there, but a few years later Amanda, our next door neighbor was told she was stupid because she couldn’t read so I wrote those games out and my wife used them to teach her to read. Within three months she received a certificate stating she was one of the best readers in her class. Only one in three kids read at grade level so I might have gotten lucky. In order to find out I asked UCLA’s Dean of the Graduate School of Education to test it. Our kids gained nearly a year in 3 months! None of our kids fell behind. I had promised God that if we got these kind of results I would sell it. Unfortunately, I knew nothing about sales. My specialty is Emergency Medicine. Most of my patients come to me under duress. I ended up selling my program to homeschoolers who were reading below grade level. (Only 1 in 6 homeschool children read below grade level, a very small audience to sell to.)
“Dr. Guffanti did you know your daughter is reading at twelfth grade level?”, she said.
Both my wife and I were shocked. Three years earlier Stephanie had refused to learn to read.
I created a series of games with her that got her reading and here we were three years later. The story would have ended there, but a few years later Amanda, our next door neighbor was told she was stupid because she couldn’t read so I wrote those games out and my wife used them to teach her to read. Within three months she received a certificate stating she was one of the best readers in her class.
Only one in three kids read at grade level so I might have gotten lucky. In order to find out I asked UCLA’s Dean of the Graduate School of Education to test it. Our kids gained nearly a year in 3 months! None of our kids fell behind. I had promised God that if we got these kind of results I would sell it. Unfortunately, I knew nothing about sales. My specialty is Emergency Medicine. Most of my patients come to me under duress.
Stephen Guffanti
I ended up selling my program to homeschoolers who were reading below grade level. (Only 1 in 6 homeschool children read below grade level, a very small audience to sell to.) In 2018 I was asked to help kids read in an inner city church. My wife refused to go. For the first time in 23 years I used Rocket Phonics to tutor children who were reading up to four years below grade level. As I got to know them I was brought back to the days I worked in Los Angeles County Jail. Most of my patients were teenagers who were either dying from gunshots or had killed another teenager. It was there I had to tell their parents that their son was dead. And research had come out that if these juveniles were brought to grade level 80% would stop the violence and get a legal job. By tutoring these kids I was literally saving their lives.
As I wrote about what I was doing others wanted to help. So in 2020 I founded the Rocket Phonics Foundation. We have been growing ever since. We have two student populations: preschool and elementary school students. We use similar games with both, but different objectives. (Always we want the kids to have fun.) For the preschoolers we are simply
teaching that letters have sounds. We go on to see if they can blend those sounds into words and if they can read those words on paper or in a book.
For elementary students our objective is to bring a child to grade level or above. Remember, by 8 years-old most children will decide their future based on one skill – reading. If they are not reading at grade level they will have a 50% unemployment rate for their adult life. Learn to read at grade level and they replace a cycle of poverty and abuse with cycles of hope, empowerment and success. Rocket Phonics, a series of reading games, can bring them to grade level in weeks instead of years. By current standards it’s a miracle. For low-income-low-literacy elementary kids its a life-saver.
Our Story
When our daughter was in third grade we were called in to talk to her teacher. “Dr. Guffanti did you know your daughter is reading at twelfth grade level?”, she said.
Both my wife and I were shocked. Three years earlier Stephanie had refused to learn to read. I created a series of games with her that got her reading and here we were three years later. The story would have ended there, but a few years later Amanda, our next door neighbor was told she was stupid because she couldn’t read so I wrote those games out and my wife used them to teach her to read. Within three months she received a certificate stating she was one of the best readers in her class. Only one in three kids read at grade level so I might have gotten lucky. In order to find out I asked UCLA’s Dean of the Graduate School of Education to test it. Our kids gained nearly a year in 3 months! None of our kids fell behind. I had promised God that if we got these kind of results I would sell it. Unfortunately, I knew nothing about sales. My specialty is Emergency Medicine. Most of my patients come to me under duress. I ended up selling my program to homeschoolers who were reading below grade level. (Only 1 in 6 homeschool children read below grade level, a very small audience to sell to.)
“Dr. Guffanti did you know your daughter is reading at twelfth grade level?”, she said.
Both my wife and I were shocked. Three years earlier Stephanie had refused to learn to read.
I created a series of games with her that got her reading and here we were three years later. The story would have ended there, but a few years later Amanda, our next door neighbor was told she was stupid because she couldn’t read so I wrote those games out and my wife used them to teach her to read. Within three months she received a certificate stating she was one of the best readers in her class.
Only one in three kids read at grade level so I might have gotten lucky. In order to find out I asked UCLA’s Dean of the Graduate School of Education to test it. Our kids gained nearly a year in 3 months! None of our kids fell behind. I had promised God that if we got these kind of results I would sell it. Unfortunately, I knew nothing about sales. My specialty is Emergency Medicine. Most of my patients come to me under duress.
I ended up selling my program to homeschoolers who were reading below grade level. (Only 1 in 6 homeschool children read below grade level, a very small audience to sell to.) In 2018 I was asked to help kids read in an inner city church. My wife refused to go. For the first time in 23 years I used Rocket Phonics to tutor children who were reading up to four years below grade level. As I got to know them I was brought back to the days I worked in Los Angeles County Jail. Most of my patients were teenagers who were either dying from gunshots or had killed another teenager. It was there I had to tell their parents that their son was dead. And research had come out that if these juveniles were brought to grade level 80% would stop the violence and get a legal job. By tutoring these kids I was literally saving their lives.
As I wrote about what I was doing others wanted to help. So in 2020 I founded the Rocket Phonics Foundation. We have been growing ever since. We have two student populations: preschool and elementary school students. We use similar games with both, but different objectives. (Always we want the kids to have fun.) For the preschoolers we are simply
teaching that letters have sounds. We go on to see if they can blend those sounds into words and if they can read those words on paper or in a book.
For elementary students our objective is to bring a child to grade level or above. Remember, by 8 years-old most children will decide their future based on one skill – reading. If they are not reading at grade level they will have a 50% unemployment rate for their adult life. Learn to read at grade level and they replace a cycle of poverty and abuse with cycles of hope, empowerment and success. Rocket Phonics, a series of reading games, can bring them to grade level in weeks instead of years. By current standards it’s a miracle. For low-income-low-literacy elementary kids its a life-saver.
Stephen Guffanti
