Literacy Now

On August 12, a group of mostly African American, Muslim high school students stood in front of Philadelphia’s City Hall, waving handmade demonstration signs. One had drawn a raised, clenched fist, emerging from black bars. Another, a rainbow-colored American flag.

Four teens read aloud the group’s list of demands, which ranged from fully-funded schools to prison reform.   

“…Nobody should be treated differently. We are all human, we all deserve the same equal rights…”

Two hundred and fifty miles away, in Charlottesville, Virginia, a different kind of protest was brewing. Not even 24 hours later, hundreds of torch-bearing white nationalists, neo-Nazis, and Ku Klux Klan members would descend upon the city to protest the removal of Confederate monuments across the South. A collision of protesters and counterprotesters would erupt in violence, leaving one person dead, 19 injured, and millions more angry, scared, and sad.

In the aftermath of tragedies like what occurred in Charlottesville, educators have the capacity to inspire collective action, starting in the classroom.

That’s exactly what author Peg Kern is doing at Mighty Writers, a nonprofit dedicated to  teaching students ages 7–17 to think and write with clarity. From August 7–11, she led the organization’s first Power to the People! protest workshop.

The students spent the first two days studying the platforms of historical and modern social movements, drawing inspiration from the Radical Monarchs, ACT UP, Sylvia Rivera, Angela Davis, the Black Panther Party, and Black Lives Matter, among others.

“I wanted to give them a deeper sense of the legacy of social movements and their place in those legacies.” said Kern. “We’ve always done a terrible job of teaching civic activism. This is critical, critical history, and you can’t step into your historical role if you don’t know who came before you.”

Kern asked the students to choose an issue they care about and to write a short paragraph expressing their point of view. She helped them weave their paragraphs into a three-page declaration that combined personal experience, history, and fact to assert their collective platform on education inequality, immigrant and racial profiling, sexual assault, police brutality, religious discrimination, mass incarceration, drug sentencing, healthcare access, and LGBTQIA rights.

The last lines of the declaration read “Welcome to Philadelphia. This is what we believe, what we want, and who we are.”

On the last day of the workshop, the students marched a mile down Broad Street to City Hall, where four volunteered to read the declaration.

Juwayriya Abdul-Hadi,15, chose to write about mass incarceration, an issue that has impacted her own family. She said she doesn’t often have opportunities to be heard by her teachers and classmates at Central High School, which enrolls more than 2,200 students.

“I want people to understand that even though we’re young and people might not listen to us, we have a voice and we need to be heard too because we’re the next generation and people after us have to learn and be educated too,” Abdul-Hadi said.

Most of the students had never attended a protest previously.

“This is the first time I’ve actually done something with a group of people, in front of City Hall or anywhere, really, saying what’s on my mind,” said 14-year-old Jayanna Taylor.

Kern said the students were nervous initially, but became more confident as they marched.

“They felt substantial,” she said. “They felt significant.”

Kern said she hopes the students left with a sense of ownership over their city and their fate, and the confidence to participate alongside the adults in their communities in future movements.  

“I think this is survival skill. It always has been, in this country but especially now. It is necessary.”

Mighty Writers was founded in 2009 with the mission to teach kids to think clearly and write with clarity. The organization offers free programs for students from elementary through high school at centers in four diverse Philadelphia neighborhoods, including one bilingual location for Spanish-speaking students. Mighty Writers offers daily afterschool academies, long- and short-term writing classes nights and weekends, teen scholar programs, mentorships, College Prep courses and college essay writing classes. You can find them on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

This is the first installment of a four-part, how-to blog series on overcoming the digital divide, an extension of ILA’s latest brief.

Internet access and equipment are but the tip of the iceberg when it comes to creating or growing a classroom technology program. Once the infrastructure is in place, schools and districts will continue to stretch their dollars for maintenance, training, technical support, software updates, and more.

Despite shrinking resources, savvy educators are still finding ways to bring technology into the classroom—and you can too. Here’s how.

Reprioritize existing funds

Seven years ago, Meriden Public Schools, an urban school district in Connecticut where more than 70% of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunches, didn’t have a single device program. Today, all 8,000 students across 12 schools have access to high-speed Wi-Fi, 1:1 devices, online classes, adaptive software, a peer-to-peer tech buddies program, and even full-time technology integration specialists.

Meriden Public Schools has since been named a District of Distinction by District Administration and one of its elementary schools was named a Model School by the International Center for Leadership in Education. The district was also featured in Edutopia's Schools That Work series.

Not bad for a district that hasn’t seen an increase in municipal funding in eight years.

So, what’s their secret?

If you ask Barbara Haeffner, the school’s director of curriculum and instructional technology, she’ll say it was making technology a priority.

“Some of our students don’t have any access at home like their peers in the suburbs,” she says. “What we provide them really opens up opportunities.”

Haeffner says once the district invested in 1:1 devices, they began to save money on textbook, paper, and printing costs.

“Anytime we were looking to buy textbooks, we said, ‘OK, is there a digital component that can better meet needs of our students?’” she says.

Apply for grants

As Meriden Public Schools’ digital transformation started to take shape, the administrators eventually looked for outside funding sources—supplementing their budget makeover with grant money from the Nellie Mae Education Foundation and Rise Education Foundation.

According to Haeffner, the key is finding a grant that matches your district’s specific goals and objectives.

“Grant funding has to be aligned with the work we’re doing in the district. We really look at the district’s goals and where we’re going, and if it’s aligned, we’re on board. Otherwise we don’t pursue those opportunities,” she says.

Applying for grants can be a tedious, time-consuming, and continuous process. Schools that are working to build ongoing tech programs may want to consider hiring a full- or part-time grant writer.

Schools can also save time by taking advantage of easy-to-use grant databases to search for specific types of grants, such as:

• Grants.gov
• Grant Watch
• GrantSelect
• GrantsAlert.com
• Teach.com
• The Big List of Educational Grants and Resources (Edutopia)

Procure government funding

In September, the U.S. Department of Education will finalize state accountability plans for implementing the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). According to the Center for Digital Education (CDE), the law authorizes new funding streams that can potentially help states and districts invest in technology. The funding allowances include:

• A new Title IV block grant program called the Student Support and Academic Enrichment grant program through which districts can use up to 60% of funding for innovative technology strategies;
• Title II funding for professional development that focuses on technology and the use of data;
• and Title I flexibility, which provides new requirements and opportunities that could motivate states/districts to concentrate more on technology as part of broader initiatives.

The CDE published a 40-page handbook to help states and districts unlock ESSA’s potential. Titled “ESSA, EdTech and the Future of Education,” the handbook provides guidance on “how to take advantage of these new opportunities and suggestions on how to integrate them with a broader strategic vision to guide teaching and learning.”

Fundraise

Fundraising has come a long way from box top clippings and bake sales. Today, anyone from venture capitalists to Facebook friends of friends can transform a classroom with just a few clicks. Easy, cost-effective, and engaging fundraising ideas include:

• Crowdfunding: Programs like Donors Choose and Digital Wish eliminate the tedious search process by connecting teachers with prospective donors. Typically, teachers create a classroom profile and a “wish list” of technologies they need for a specific classroom project. Donors then give to the project of their choice. Teachers can also share the crowdfunding page with their personal networks through social media.
• Recycling fundraisers: Classrooms can also raise money (and help save the environment!) through FundingFactory, a free program that encourages the donation of empty toner and ink cartridges. As the items are recycled, the school earns points that can later be exchanged for educational technology or cash. Check out Scholastica Travel Inc.’s “Awesome Fundraising Ideas: Recycling Fundraisers for School Trips” for a list of similar recycling fundraisers.

Apply for teacher awards

Many teacher award programs, such as the NEA Foundation’s Awards for Teaching Excellence, grant winners cash prizes to spend in their classrooms. Check out The New Teacher Project’s (TNTP) list of 10 Awards for Great Teachers for more 

Secure corporate partnerships

Digital Promise, a nonprofit authorized by the United States Congress to spur innovation in education and improve the opportunity to learn for all through technology and research, was founded in the strength of public–private partnerships, according to Erica Lawton, senior communications manager. 

“As an organization, we see this as a community issue,” says Lawton. “You need the partnership of multiple stakeholders to tackle these challenges.”

Inside Philanthropy encourages schools to look for regional or state employers who “need a robust, smart workforce in your community.” Even mega-corporations such as Motorola, American Honda, and Chevron take community-based approaches to STEM K–12 giving, often offering small- and mid-sized grants in cities where they operate.

These win-win partnerships are good for both the businesses and the students—schools get a chance to experiment and innovate, while businesses practice corporate responsibility and “road-test” their products.

Looking ahead

While charitable grants, fundraising campaigns, and corporate partnerships offer patchwork solutions to the digital divide—Haeffner believes these means are only as strong as the school’s leadership.

“Our teachers are our most important asset; without them we wouldn’t be able to make these gains,” she says. “Salaries are one of our big expenses because we need people to be there with our students.”

With teachers’ support, students are not stopping at mastering these digital skills; they are taking their digital learning into their own hands.

“We have teachers who are truly facilitators now; the students will come in and say, ‘Hey, I found something better,’” Haeffner says. “As our students are becoming more tech-savvy, they are really pushing teachers as well.

To explore the rest of this four-part series, visit the links below:

Overcoming the Digital Divide, Step Two: Critically Frame 21st-Century Skills

Overcoming the Digital Divide, Step Three: Provide Resources

Overcoming the Digital Divide, Step Four: Advocate


Alina O'Donnell is the editor of Literacy Daily.

Just the very act of reading this article sets us apart from millions of people in the world who do not have the skills to read and write. According to UNESCO, 12% of the world’s population is not functionally literate. Reading this staggering statistic and thinking about the vast numbers of people affected can be overwhelming. But the solution is not for the individual to solve; it is for all of us to solve.

And when we want to be part of this work, it turns out that we are not alone. There are so many people and organizations around the world that are doing the important work of advancing literacy.

The following is just one example. This is how the Massachusetts Reading Association (MRA) has become involved in the work of two important projects to advance literacy in South Africa.

Forming partnerships

Since 2009, MRA has made financial donations to the Family Literacy Project (FLP), a program based in a rural area in the province of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. Rooted in the knowledge that literacy begins at home before a child even enters formal schooling, the FLP supports parents and caregivers to create everyday opportunities to build early literacy skills. FLP trains home visitors to visit isolated rural families and support their literacy interactions with children. Very often the parents and caregivers want to improve their own literacy skills, and the FLP provides this training as well.

In addition, the organization runs community libraries so adults and children alike can build and strengthen their reading skills. FLP runs four community libraries and other smaller libraries in boxes, much like Little Free Libraries, so that people throughout the 15 villages in the region can have access to reading materials. An outgrowth of these libraries has been reading clubs for children and teenagers.

MRA’s newest international partnership was established last summer when our members attended a session at the ILA conference in Boston. Judith Baker, a consultant for the South African organization African Storybook, presented its creative and pragmatic work. One of the barriers to literacy in Africa is the lack of reading material in a child’s mother tongue. African Storybook has found a way to address this lack of reading material, not only for vernacular languages but also for culturally relevant characters and settings. African Storybook’s goal is to provide open access to picture storybooks in the languages of Africa so that children can develop literacy in their home language and experience the enjoyment and spark of imagination that reading can bring.

On the basis of the difficulty of providing printed books and acknowledging that cell phone use is widespread throughout Africa, African Storybook creates stories in a digital format that can be downloaded and read on smartphones. Because the stories are all created as open source material, people can translate the stories into their language. They can also write their own stories to add to the collection.

What you can do

I traveled to South Africa, the country where I am originally from, last August. The purpose of my trip was not only to visit family but also to explore closer literacy connections between my former home and my new home in Massachusetts. During my visit, I was fortunate enough to make connections with the directors of both of these projects.

In Johannesburg I met with the project leader of African Storybook, Tessa Welch. The remoteness of FLP precluded a visit, but I had many conversations with its director, Pierre Horn. From these discussions, it was obvious that financial support is always welcome. It takes money to buy books for FLP’s community libraries. It takes money to develop the apps and software to make stories accessible through African Storybook. But our support for the crucial literacy work of these organizations will go beyond our continued financial support.

MRA’s International Projects Committee has plans to exchange expertise and strengthen the personal connections between the organizations. FLP is looking for skilled literacy teachers to provide training, especially in the area of struggling readers. This, of course, necessitates face-to-face training, either in Massachusetts or in South Africa. The logistics of raising funds and recruiting volunteers to travel and teach has become our new challenge to embrace.

African Storybook needs people to translate and edit their open source stories into a myriad of African languages. Anyone literate in an African language can help directly in this project. And even if MRA and ILA members may not be fluent themselves, through our associations with universities and others, we can recruit the needed editors and translators.

These are just two examples of what MRA is doing, but they show what any chapter or affiliate can do to get involved and make a global impact. Here are some starting points that can help your organization:

• Form an International Projects Committee to explore and promote international literacy projects.
• List the assets (not just financial) of your organization. Do you have members who are teacher educators, are EL teachers fluent in other languages, have experience teaching abroad, have emigrated from or who have connections to other countries?
• Attend conferences and look for presentations that focus on international literacy initiatives.
• Connect on social media to learn about new projects and initiatives. Follow @ILAToday on Twitter and also search for ideas with #InternationalLiteracy or #WorldLiteracy.

Possibilities abound to promote literacy worldwide. By connecting with people in your local literacy organization and with people engaged in literacy work around the world, our ability to read, write, and communicate will, as ILA promotes, connect us with people and empower all of us to achieve things we never thought possible.

Leandra Elion is the chair of the International Projects Committee for the Massachusetts Reading Association, a 2016 ILA Award of Excellence recipient.

This article originally appeared in the January/February issue of Literacy Today, ILA’s member magazine.

Not just anyone can be an effective teacher, let alone an effective literacy teacher. Yet the tenor of recent policy debates in the United States has often been highly critical of the nation’s teaching corps, and especially so with respect to initial licensure programs.

While these programs demonstrate differing levels of quality and rigor, the creeping assumption has been that the nation’s schools need better teachers than they are getting, and that alternative pathways to teacher certification should be an urgent priority.

But there’s a crucial defect at the very root of the discussion, a defect which a combined task force of the International Literacy Association (ILA) and the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) has now brought to light, namely the lack of research behind many of the negative claims regarding teacher preparation.

The ILA–NCTE Literacy Teacher Preparation research advisory was researched by the joint task force and drafted by Victoria J. Risko (pictured on the right), professor emerita at Peabody College's Department of Teaching and Learning at Vanderbilt University, and Louann Reid (pictured below), professor and chair of the Department of English at Colorado State University. It brings to the policy clash a much-needed counterpoint, answering the narrowness of political remedies with a set of defining, evidence-based characteristics of effective teacher preparation programs.

Predicated on an extensive review of the research findings, the advisory acknowledges the lack of any large-scale, longitudinal study to date that follows teachers across their coursework and into their careers.

However, it emphasizes that a convergence across numerous studies of teacher learning and practice, as well as evidence from analyses of effective teacher preparation programs, identify four critical quality indicators for prospective teachers’ learning and new teachers’ performance:

• Knowledge development. Teacher preparation entails the acquisition of a foundational knowledge of multiple literacies, literacy learning, language development, curriculum, theories of teaching and learning, and subject matter content and pedagogy. Coursework addresses issues such as race, class, gender, culture, language, educational equity, and teaching for social justice. This preparation broadens new teachers’ perspectives and helps them to see students’ differences as assets.
• Authentic contexts. Instructional competency is developed by strong field experience in authentic settings. Field experience with guidance and mentoring develops prospective new teachers’ skills in providing differentiated instruction, including engagement with culturally and linguistically diverse students. It also develops their personal approaches to pedagogy and assessment, and encourages them to join professional learning communities. Lacking such preparation, a new classroom teacher may become overwhelmed.
• Ongoing teacher development. Effective teacher preparation programs equip prospective teachers to engage in self-critique and analytical thinking and inspire them to seek continuous professional learning. They provide carefully planned and mentored opportunities for debriefing and reconciling prior beliefs with new knowledge and theories about pedagogy. Without this guidance, prospective teachers may struggle with adapting their approaches to meet students’ needs and responding to the challenges every classroom presents.
• Ongoing assessments. Four critical assessment points are prominent across teacher preparation programs of excellence: program admission, monitoring students’ progress, benchmarking students’ accomplishments (for example, by building personal teaching portfolios), and tracking success by gathering data on graduates.

Risko, who served as ILA’s lead on the project, emphasizes that claims disavowing the value of teacher education programs are not supported by research.

“We are reporting on the substantial evidence documenting the impact of teacher preparation courses on teachers’ learning, on their teaching practices in the classroom as new teachers and, with some investigations, the impact of teacher preparation on pupil learning,” Risko says.

Reid, who served as NCTE’s lead, stresses two additional points about the advisory.

“An expert teacher never stops learning, and novice teachers need to realize that it’s OK not to know everything right away,” she says.

Reid recommends that preparation programs include partnerships with school districts that have strong induction programs.

 “Some new teachers heed the advice to forget everything they learned in the university because they are now in the real world,” she says.  

The ILA–NCTE advisory is a treasure trove for policy advocates and literacy researchers. More than 140 key reference citations are included in its reference and resource sections. Risko and Reid gave additional insights about the piece in an interview on Education Talk Radio.

Dan Mangan is the director of public affairs at the International Literacy Association.

2017 is a pivotal year for education policy in the United States. Right now, state leaders are creating plans and policies to implement the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), the latest reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, which serves to ensure excellence and equity in all public schools.

Historically, education policy has not reflected the diverse needs and desires of all communities. As we reshape the education system, is critically important that families of color—the new majority of public school parents—are represented in conversations about education reform.

To amplify their voices, The Leadership Conference Education Fund, by way of Anzalone Liszt Grove Research, conducted its second annual New Education Majority Poll: a national survey that "captures the beliefs of Black and Latino parents and families and reveals the actual perspectives, aspirations, and concerns that they have about their children’s education and the education system itself." 

The poll revealed that perceptions of racial disparities among black and Latino parents are more pronounced than last year. Key findings include the following:

• The overwhelming majority of survey participants believe schools with mostly white students receive more funding than schools with mostly black students and schools with mostly Latino students.
• Both groups cited lack of funding as the main reason for racial disparities in education, followed by racial bias, lower teacher quality, lack of opportunity, lack of parental involvement, poor school facilities, and language problems.
• Black and Latino parents and family members whose children attend schools with mostly white students are more likely to rate their child’s school as “excellent.”
• Parents and family members of color whose child’s teachers are mostly white are more likely to agree with the statement “Schools in the U.S. are not really trying to educate black/Latino students” than those with mostly black or mostly Latino teachers.
• Both groups cite qualified teachers as the most important indicator of classroom success, followed by a strong curriculum and a safe environment.
• Black and Latino parents would like their children to be more challenged in school and want all students to be held to the same standards. 
• Both groups believe that report cards, followed by the student-teacher ratio, are the two most important pieces of information to determine school quality.
• Parents of color have high expectations for their children, and want their children’s teachers to mirror these expectations.
• Both groups believe that school funding is best spent on resources (specifically books and computers); advanced classes; increased teacher pay; and extracurricular activities, vocational classes, and after school programs.

The report concludes with a list of proposed policy changes to address and remedy the concerns expressed by poll participants. Recommendations include integrating implicit bias and cultural responsiveness training into teacher preparation and professional development; monitoring resource distribution (including strong teachers and rigorous courses); preparing, hiring, supporting, and retaining high-quality black and Latino teachers; and designing stronger accountability systems that focus on high academic achievement.

The Leadership Conference Education Fund builds public will for laws and policies that promote and protect the civil and human rights of every person in the United States. In so doing, we also seek to promote an appreciation for the rich diversity of the country, and attitudes that are accepting of our differences and similarities. We were founded in 1969 as the education and research arm of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights (then called the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights), the nation’s premier civil and human rights coalition of more than 200 national organizations.

Alina O'Donnell is the editor of Literacy Daily.