The Literacy Center of West Michigan works tirelessly to promote literacy in the community, among all ages whether someone is learning to read for the first time or learning to speak English as a second language. With powerful champions like Mayor George Heartwell and Eastern Floral CEO and community activist Bing Goei, they've been able to implement and execute programs all over the city.
Lindsay McHolme works as Community Literacy Liaison for the Literacy Center of West Michigan and has blogged for Rapid Growth on the topic of literacy before. "As a coalition," she says, "we're hoping to bring together the entire community." She talks about a planned literacy summit in September where guest speakers and breakout workshop sessions will pull everyone into progress together. The Literacy Center has been compiling data, hoping to soon track where they're at and where they're going, and create programs to correspond to that information. They're also working on a list of resources and a common measurement system so that everyone can be on the same page.
Another thing they've been working on is the
Family Literacy Program in collaboration with the United Way and Grand Rapids Public Schools. According to the National Center for Family Literacy, McHolme reports, "adults and children participating in family literacy programs demonstrate greater gains in literacy than adults or children in age-focused programs."
The Schools of Hope Family Literacy Program's goal is an important one when it comes to the engagement of parents in their children's school lives. Active in six Grand Rapids Public Schools, the program works to help families who may not all grasp the English language become comfortable speaking and reading the language, effectively helping parents connect with their children and their educators.
In 2010, The Kellogg Foundation awarded a $598,258 grant to the Literacy Center to develop a literacy initiative targeting the parents of vulnerable children residing in the four "Hope Zones." Two of these six schools -- Ceasar Chavez and Burton Elementary -- are located in the Hope Zones or directly effected by them, four neighborhoods where 80 percent of the children are at academic risk. The LIteracy Center already acts in these neighborhoods, right alongside the Believe 2 Become program, instituted by LINC. The program serves over 130 families total.
"The classes happen in the school during school hours," McHolme says, "so the kids see the parents going to school alongside them." Families also have the option of participating in activities outside of school hours, including Family Literacy Night. Families who attend a Family Literacy Night will receive a meal, as well as work with AmeriCorps on a pre-literacy activity parents can take home and work on with their children.
Tony Campbell, VP of Focused Impact at Heart of West Michigan United Way, is a fountain of statistics and passionate about making positive changes in neighborhoods from the ground up. "[The Family Literacy Program] grew out of seven Hispanic forums where 40 Hispanic community leaders attended each one of the these forums," he says. A problem identified in the community was that if children were going to succeed with literacy in school, then the literacy capacity of their parents had to increase. Oftentimes, parents spoke only Spanish while their child was bilingual. The parents were in an awkward position where they couldn't understand what was going on in schools, often making it hard to enforce discipline or become engaged when the parent was dependent on the child to tell them what was happening in their predominantly English-speaking education environment. "We worked with the Literacy Center to develop this model to really try and empower parents," Campbell says. "Parents are the first teachers of their children… Giving them the English language skills empowers them to be stronger parents."
80 percent of effected parents report greater participation in school with their kids. "Beyond teaching literacy," Campbell says, "we also teach the rights and responsibilities that you have as a parent."
Veronica Clapp is an Instructor with AmeriCorps. She works in both Brookside and Burton Elementary. "We try to have activities for both the parents and kids to work together, and it's a good way for the parents to be in a secure environment and practice their English," she says. "It's also a good way for kids to see their parents in a classroom environment."
Activities Clapp and her colleagues have conducted in the past include making Christmas cards for students' teachers, story reading and parent/teacher conference preparedness. Clapp says not all of her students are Hispanic. "We have Vietnamese students, refugees -- a student from Turkey who has to learn the entire alphabet," she says. "It's awesome when you have student who don't know any [English], and students who can pick out things and will help them."
"The Literacy Center and the United Way didn't just dream this up, " Campbell says. "Not only did we have the seven Hispanic forums, but we interviewed about eight African American congregations. Out of those eight congregations, the top three issues for the community were education, employment and law enforcement. With Hispanic communities, education, employment and immigration. Within those two different communities, education and employment rose to the top. Those grassroots communities really wanted to see agencies in the town work on those things. Initiatives often happen from the top down. Someone in an office thinks this is what's best for the community, but this is one time where someone in the community spoke and the agencies responded."
82 percent of parents made significant gains in reading or listening comprehension, as determined by CASAS (Comprehensive Adult Student Assessment System), a six-level measurement test for ELL students. Additionally, 54 percent children whose parents participated in the program met their target reading growth on their M.A.P. assessments. This is significant, according to Family Literacy Director Shay Kraley because "our Family Literacy children come from self-identified low literate parents, and yet they are keeping up with their (perhaps) more advantaged counterparts."
As a former teacher, Kraley says, "I've personally seen the effects of low-literacy among families. Children who are not taught crucial literacy skills at a young age enter classrooms less interested and far less prepared to learn."
In comparison to those bright statistics provided above, there are others that Campbell says indicating we're in a crisis: According to the MEAP scores, Michigan rates 50 out of 50 states in reading comprehension for fourth grade African American students. Michigan is below 25 in every category (save math among the Hispanic population). Students in higher income brackets and white students are scoring at some of the lowest rates in the nation, dispelling the myth that is a problem only among poor communities and minority populations.
"Awareness of the data shows a couple of things," Campbell says. "It lets us know the literacy issue is not just an education issue, but talent retention. Can you attracted talented people and can you retain them? Capital flows where there are the most Masters, Bachelors and high school graduates. If we're going to compete as a region, we need to do adult and student literacy in a much better way. If you look at the economic data, someone who doesn't graduation from high school has $558 million in lifetime loss earnings. It's an economic issue, a talent retention issue, an education issue. The work the literacy center is doing is absolutely critical."
Campbell talks about how it is essential to empower the community and make the effect of the work more like a rile than a shotgun. "We need to create a sense of urgency, and the response to this crisis is embedding, empowering and coordinating."
To learn more about the many initiatives of the
Literacy Program and the
United Way, you can visit their sites here and here, respectively.
J. Bennett Rylah is the Managing Editor of Rapid Growth Media.