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| Row 1: Albania Jimenez, Jean Andrews, and Deborah Dessaure. Row 2: Lisa Holmes, Rosa Sanchez, Debora Mulrain (NNPS Key Contact), Karon McFarlane, and Martiza Fred. |
Literacy, Inc. (LINC) is developing a model to coordinate community resources and services that help schools and their neighborhoods work together to increase young children's reading skills and attitudes about reading. The organization helps districts and schools in New York City and Hudson, NY, understand family and community connections and goal-oriented partnerships in reading that can be extended in collaboration with NNPS. LINC also won an NNPS award in 2002.
LINC Coordinators guide the development of a Community Literacy Network (CLN) - a committee of community leaders and organizations that conducts a variety of activities link to school goals to improve students' reading skills and scores. LINC's CLNs provide out-of classroom reading time and reading experiences for children from K-3, such as reading partner programs and community literacy events. Annual plans are written to identify and make the best use of community resources to promote students' vocabulary development, fluency, and reading enjoyment. New LINC initiatives in the past year focused on helping parents and children who are English language learners work together on early literacy skills.
LINC conducts several leadership activities to support its goals including Partner Breakfasts where community and school partners share ideas; Spring Sessions, which helped school leaders, librarians, parents, teen reading partners, senior citizens, and others focus on summer reading activities; and The Bronx Zoo TIGER (Together in Getting Everyone Reading) celebration, with 19 schools participating in a read-a-thon.
LINC provides a toolkit on how to develop community partners for literacy initiatives. Presently, over 600 community partners are working on 125 early childhood literacy programs throughout the city - more than double the number two years ago. Several schools with which LINC works also are members of NNPS. LINC helps them extend Type 6-Collaborating with the Community in their One-Year Action Plans. The schools then may develop their full programs of family and community involvement in other subjects and grade levels.
LINC helps its partners gather data with formal and informal surveys and with oral and written progress reports on activities for reading that are offered to students and families in their communities. LINC is compiling programs in a "knowledge bank" to document the activities that are being implemented to reach out to community organizations on reading.
In the next year, LINC will extend an awards program for original and excellent community literacy programs, and conduct a celebration for parents who see that their children attend school every day. It is working with other partners to provide DVDs containing useful information on how to share books with babies to parents and other caretakers who make well-baby visits at community health centers.
Also see LINC's history of Partnership Organization Awards in 2002 and details on its "Partner Breakfasts" in Promising Partnership Practices 2005 on the Web site, www.partnershipschools.org, in the section In the Spotlight. For more information on the organization, visit www.lincnyc.org.