flowerseverywhere
4-18-11, 8:19am
One of my friends is an educator in a very poor dictrict that depends on 80% state aid. This area has generational poverty and no way for these kids to climb out.
When the kids come to school, they often have no idea of their colors, numbers, letters. No one has taught them how to write their name or has read to them.
The idea is one that she heard about and may be an established program somewhere for all we know. You get people that are peers in the community to go into the homes of babies each week. They bring books and educational toys and sit and play with the baby or read to them each week and then leave the toy and ask the mom/dad to do what you did every day. The next week you go back and take what they had and leave something else and show a new task. This is behavior that has not been modeled to them, so they don't know how to do it. Adults in the community started so far behind and therefore ended up hating school and generally have a distrust for educators. Once they get in the habit then it can be transitioned to the library story hour or every month they could receive a new batch of books and toys to borrow. I am not so naive that I think it will work in every case, but maybe we can change the lives of some of these unfortunate youngsters.
Anyway, I have access to many toys and books and can get more. Our community garage sale is next week and I can find lots of great toys and don't mind spending a few hundred dollars for a nice collection. And my local salvation army sells books for fifty cents or less and they are mostly brand new. I would volunteer to go into the homes but the point is to have peer modeling. So that entails getting someone else. I would think the highest success would be to hire someone, so then we would have to set up a non-profit and get insurance etc. I don't think it would be a terribly expensive program and we can figure out how to raise money.
Anyone hear of anything like this and have any suggestions?
When the kids come to school, they often have no idea of their colors, numbers, letters. No one has taught them how to write their name or has read to them.
The idea is one that she heard about and may be an established program somewhere for all we know. You get people that are peers in the community to go into the homes of babies each week. They bring books and educational toys and sit and play with the baby or read to them each week and then leave the toy and ask the mom/dad to do what you did every day. The next week you go back and take what they had and leave something else and show a new task. This is behavior that has not been modeled to them, so they don't know how to do it. Adults in the community started so far behind and therefore ended up hating school and generally have a distrust for educators. Once they get in the habit then it can be transitioned to the library story hour or every month they could receive a new batch of books and toys to borrow. I am not so naive that I think it will work in every case, but maybe we can change the lives of some of these unfortunate youngsters.
Anyway, I have access to many toys and books and can get more. Our community garage sale is next week and I can find lots of great toys and don't mind spending a few hundred dollars for a nice collection. And my local salvation army sells books for fifty cents or less and they are mostly brand new. I would volunteer to go into the homes but the point is to have peer modeling. So that entails getting someone else. I would think the highest success would be to hire someone, so then we would have to set up a non-profit and get insurance etc. I don't think it would be a terribly expensive program and we can figure out how to raise money.
Anyone hear of anything like this and have any suggestions?