Charles Haley is best known as a five-time Super Bowl champion as linebacker for the San Francisco 49ers and as defensive end for the Dallas Cowboys. But what might be lesser known is that Haley is a reading literacy advocate for children in Oak Cliff schools.
In 2014, Haley co-founded the nonprofit Tackle Tomorrow with Bob Bowie, a community volunteer and civic leader in Dallas. Before that, however, they looked for ways to give back to the community through building playgrounds for children and educating fathers.
Now Tackle Tomorrow has partnered with DISD schools, mainly in Oak Cliff and South Dallas, to encourage reading literacy among students in Pre-K through fifth grade. Elementary schools where Tackle Tomorrow is active include: Robert L. Thornton, Whitney M. Young, Paul Dunbar Learning Center, Frederick Douglass and H.I. Holland.
The children in the reading program come from disadvantaged communities, and the reading coaches who lead the program are former teachers with 25 to 30 years of experience.
Charles Haley, left, at a Tackle Tomorrow event.
“Our main initiative is to beautify the schools. I want the kids to walk in there and feel the warmth of the schools,” he says. “The thing that we cannot control is the leadership in the schools and the teachers. We cannot control whether they want to come to work or if the person wants to be the leader.”
It was during college when Haley found value in education, particularly writing literacy.
As a college student at James Madison University in 1982, Haley went to the writing center with a paper he wanted help with. In his words, he didn’t think it was too bad of a paper, but he was met with a different reaction from the writing lab assistant.
“I thought I wrote a great paper, and the lady told me I wrote a paper of a tenth grader. And I got my paper out of her hand and ran out and as I was running out, tears were coming out of my eyes,” he says.
After cooling off, he returned to the writing center and asked the lab assistant for help. During summer, he would stay at college to catch up in the coursework where he was behind. That and getting his college degree was his hardest challenge in life.
Tackle Tomorrow’s other initiatives include providing ESL classes, computer stations and planting school gardens.
The organization also hosts events like golf tournaments, fundraiser dinners and turkey giveaways around the holidays. The next event is a poker night at Gilley’s on Apr. 7. Dallas Police Department also takes part in Tackle Tomorrow’s volunteer efforts.
“I just want the kids to understand that they are loved, and when you don’t show up every day, they can’t understand,” he says. “So we have to change the way kids perceive education. I want everybody to come into the schools and read to the kids and be a part of this because that’s the only way we can learn to love each other.”
