As our communities face serious economic challenges, it’s easy to focus solely on the dire news of the day: dwindling budgets, programs at risk. So, now more than ever, it’s important to appreciate the work that energizes us and gives us hope. Here in Oregon one such program is our new statewide training project to increase early childhood literacy skills.
In 2008, after many years of planning and securing funds, Reading for Healthy Families: Building Communities of Learning was launched in 14 of Oregon’s 36 counties. Reading for Healthy Families (RFHF) represents our state’s version of “Every Child Ready to Read @ your library,” a research-based early literacy curriculum created by the Public Library Association and the Association for Library Service to Children.
The strength of Reading for Healthy Families comes from the combined efforts of the Oregon State Library and the Oregon Commission on Children and Families (OCCF). Although both share a mission to promote early childhood development, they serve different families in different ways. OCCF administers a Healthy Start family support program in every county and provides comprehensive assessments to first-time parents and their children who may be at risk for poor learning outcomes. The State Library monitors a public library in almost every county, offering supportive learning environments and eager staff members who are passionate about children, reading, and literacy.
Building a statewide project such as RFHF requires four levels of committed trainers. Five master trainers are initially shown how to instruct others in the Every Child Ready to Read (ECRR) @ your library curriculum. The master trainers then train 25 to 30 library staffers and Healthy Start family support workers in four regions over a two-day period in our adapted ECRR curriculum.
These family support workers and library staff each provide motivation, education, and resources to 15 families to help their children develop the skills they need to know before they start kindergarten. In three years, RFHF will train more than 300 family support workers and children’s library staff members and reach more than 4,500 families statewide.
Since one of RFHF’s main objectives is to create early literacy networks within each community, early literacy coaches are also trained to identify projects that they can put into practice together. Many of the participants have excellent ideas for partnerships, but they haven’t had the time to work together developing and implementing their plans. Sharing knowledge and services helps each organization become more efficient and influential.
Reading for Healthy Families, the collaborative brainchild of the State Library’s Mary Kay Dahlgreen and OCCF’s Susan Lindauer, has been very successful as a result of strong state and local leadership. Working with dedicated, capable, and fun people, while creating positive outcomes amidst all the negative news, lifts our spirits and makes it possible to weather the budget challenges. That’s also what makes such a far-reaching program possible.
RFHF’s leadership team converts an overwhelming amount of work into a great deal of fun. Project Coordinator Joann Contini, State Library Youth Services Consultant Katie Anderson, and Healthy Start Program Coordinator Karen Van Tassel have demonstrated that fun leaders create fun trainers, who, in turn, put together fun training sessions with lively materials and shared activities. All this positive energy translates into fun for parents, and best of all, fun for their children.
RFHF has the potential to enrich all of Oregon’s families with the knowledge, skills, resources, and motivation necessary to provide their children with the positive educational experiences they need to be ready to read when they start kindergarten—and that’s truly good news.