Learning to Read, Learning to Live
Todd Schnick does not speak about literacy as an idea.
He speaks about it as a threshold.
“If a child can’t read,” he says, “they can get by. But they can’t really move forward.”
As a Trustee of Union League Boys & Girls Clubs, Todd has spent years walking through Club sites, watching young people learn, talk, build, and imagine. He sees the curiosity immediately. The questions. The spark. And he sees, just as clearly, the invisible barriers that make academic success harder than it should be.
During one visit, Todd watched students immersed in a hands-on STEM activity. They were engaged, animated, working together. Then someone mentioned that many of those same students did not receive consistent science instruction at school.
The comment landed quietly, but it stayed with him.
If access to learning is uneven during the school day, then what happens after school is not enrichment. It is essential.
That understanding has shaped how Todd thinks about Union League Boys & Girls Clubs’ Academic Success pillar. Literacy, for him, is not one initiative among many. It is the foundation beneath everything else. Homework help. Career readiness. Leadership development. The ability to participate fully in the world.
Children learn to read. Then they read to learn. When that transition falters, the consequences ripple outward.
“If a child isn’t reading proficiently by fourth grade,” Todd says, “school becomes harder everywhere.”
He is careful not to point fingers. Todd understands the weight carried by classrooms today. Overcrowded rooms. Limited resources. Students navigate challenges that begin long before the first bell rings.
“The issue isn’t effort,” he says. “It’s capacity.”
That belief is why Union League Boys & Girls Clubs has leaned into partnerships that strengthen academic support while keeping young people rooted in the Club environment they trust. One of those partnerships includes Tutoring Chicago, where Todd also serves on the board, bringing one-to-one tutoring into Club spaces for students who need it most.
What matters to him is not the structure on paper, but the consistency in practice.
“The hardest part isn’t finding kids who need help,” Todd says. “It’s finding adults who can commit to showing up.”
When that commitment exists, the change is rarely loud. It is gradual. A student raises their hand more often. A chapter feels manageable. Confidence settles in.
Todd is equally moved by something simpler. Books. Real ones.
At a recent literacy event at the Barreto Club, students were invited to choose their own books. Tables were arranged by age. There were options. There was choice.
“The energy shifted,” Todd remembers. “They were comparing covers. Talking about what they picked. Asking if they could take another one.”
It was not a grand moment. It was a human one.
“There’s curiosity there,” he says. “It hasn’t disappeared.”
For Todd, literacy is inseparable from exposure. Reading opens inner worlds. Experience opens outer ones. He believes deeply in taking young people beyond the boundaries of their neighborhoods and into places where possibility becomes visible.
Museums. Science centers. Spaces where a career, a discipline, or a future suddenly feels real.
“You can’t aspire to something you’ve never seen,” he says.
Reading is what allows those moments to stay. Literacy gives language to curiosity. Structure to thought. It is how young people begin to understand not just what they are learning, but who they might become.
“You can’t write if you can’t read,” Todd says. “And writing is how you discover what you think.”
At Union League Boys & Girls Clubs, academic success is not framed as a short-term outcome. It is a long view. Built through relationships. Reinforced through consistency. Sustained by belief.
“This work isn’t about quick fixes,” Todd says. “It’s about building something that lasts.”
Literacy rarely draws attention to itself.
But it shapes every path that follows.
And at Union League Boys & Girls Clubs, it remains at the heart of the work.