started the CBB about a year and a half ago on the notion that children's achievement in school starts from the training they receive in their pre-school years. During her time as a Teach for America volunteer in 1991, Dani witnessed a gap in achievement levels between the students she was teaching. Some had had little to no exposure to reading or books before arriving at school and they consistently struggled. Even if these children could improve at the same rate as the other children, they remained behind.Dani started the CBB to address this specific problem. Through grants and book donations she collects books for children under the age of six. She and her volunteers (now including us!) spruce up the books - wiping down the covers and removing any marks and patching any tears - and then they sort the books into assorted stacks of around twelve books each. Each stack goes into a tote and the totes are distributed to area Head Start programs. By using the existing Head Start system, Dani knows the children receiving her books are in low-income households, she knows the books arrive at the homes with the Head Start staff who can model reading aloud for the parents of the children, and she can systemati
cally cover the city one neighborhood at a time! She has already achieved an incredible amount in a very short time and we were very impressed with this one-woman operation!Here are two sentences that may give you pause:
In homes in middle income neighborhoods, the ratio of books to children is 13 books for every child.
In low income neighborhoods the ratio is 1 book for every 300 children.
The moral of the story is that we should be buying books both for the children we know and those we don't. We should be reading to them every day, and we should be cleaning and sorting books at the Children's Book Bank!
No comments:
Post a Comment