December 3, 2025
Ruckiya Ross and Querida Flores, of Education Couture. Photo provided by Swank PR.
Stories this photo appears in:
Education Couture Promotes Literacy And Learning
A local program, founded by a speech-language therapist, is making literacy more accessible and culturally relevant. Ruckiya Ross first came up with the idea for Education Couture in 2014 while working in the Chicago Public Schools. In her work in communities on the South side, she noticed literacy gaps and also noticed that learning didn’t excite the children as much as pop culture, music and fashion. She wanted to make children as passionate about reading as they were about other things that grabbed their attention. She left CPS, Ross returned as a volunteer to test an idea that blended therapeutic practices with hip-hop rhythm and neuroscience-based strategies to spark engagement and build vocabulary. Those early experiments became the foundation for Education Couture. Querida Flores and Ruckiya Ross, of Education Couture, took the time to answer questions that were submitted to them by the Citizen Newspaper.