Sheila Sussman, Consultant and Key Contact to NNPS; Vera Weintraub, Executive Director
Row 1: Mimi Lieber (Founder), Irma Zardoya (Superintendent, Community School District 10), Kim Suttell (NNPS Key Contact), and Joan Prince. Row 2: Ronn Jordan, Debora Mulrain, Lisa Holmes, Deborah Dessaure, and Miguel Melendez. Not Pictured: Sheila Sussman (NNPS Key Contact), Ruby Whidbee and Cheryl Green.
Literacy, Inc. (LINC) is developing a model of outreach to coordinate community resources and school programs to support young students as readers. The organization helps districts and schools build knowledge and capacities to conduct school, family, and community partnership programs linked to reading in the early grades.
By working with NNPS, LINC and its district and school partners are assisted to connect partnerships to all school improvement goals, including reading, at all grade levels. For example, in the Bronx, district leaders report that every school has a parent involvement subcommittee (CLN or Action Team for Partnership) linked to the School Leadership Team.
LINC Coordinators work with district leaders to organize plans and activities to support young readers and their families in many schools in Bronx and Brooklyn, NY, and in other NY districts. Together, the LINC coordinators, district, and school leaders establish Community Literacy Networks (CLN) to identify and activate neighborhood resources to help students learn to read, improve reading skills, and experience many kinds of reading opportunities, obtain books, receive tutoring, tutoring, mentoring, and support for reading as needed. (See the LINC website,www.lincnyc.org).
In the 2001-2002 school year, LINC worked with about 30 schools and over 80 community partners in District 10 in Bronx, NY, to implement over 50 literacy activities that provided more than 1300 hours of extra reading time to students. Over 1000 students were engaged in these activities.
With support and guidance from LINC, community partners, and NNPS, schools in the Bronx and Brooklyn have implemented partnership activities such as LION/BEAR days (Literacy in our Neighborhood/Be Excited About Reading), reading buddy/partner programs for young children with teens and seniors, reading corners in neighborhood locations (e.g., banks, laundromats, parks, building lobbies), monthly family read-alongs, and parent to parent conversations about children's reading. The schools link these family and community involvement activities to improve reading to their Comprehensive Education Plans and goals for student success.
LINC conducts various evaluations of its programs by documenting the number of participants in school and community activities, recording how much additional reading time for children results from activities, and surveying district administrators for their reactions to the reading partnership activities. An outside evaluation in 2002 concluded that LINC's work with districts and schools greatly increased community and family involvement in literacy activities with children.
LINC leaders wrote: "…the National Network of Partnership Schools is highly regarded by school leaders. . . .The Network's emphasis on research and technical assistance provides scaffolding for each Community Literacy Network's (CLN) team-building activities. Individual schools get significant help … from the resources and information shared through NNPS. We have found the "six keys" to be an excellent framework to help schools (build) their programs of school, family, and community literacy partnerships."