May 3, 2009 — Bethany Marshall brings a plate of chocolate chip cookies to 19 attentive Head Start youngsters to whom she is reading a story about …chocolate chip cookies. The youngsters hang on every word.
Marshall knows her way around teaching tots, and it's not just the cookies. The youngsters eat up the words as if they were cookies, egged on by her theatrics in reading:
"I know most of you don't have doorbells, but what do they sound like?"
"Ding, ding."
"That's it!"
This is the dynamic that Marshall and Lisa Morris, co-directors of the newly created Caribbean Literacy Exchange, want to introduce into the classroom and the living room: a love of reading, and its pleasures for parents and children alike.
Marshall and Morris are kindred souls. They worked together on projects at The Family Connection, a resource center for early childhood development, a Community Foundation of the Virgin Islands program. There they discovered a mutual interest in child literacy.
"What drives me," Morris says, "are the Kids Count reports on the low literacy rates in the territory, the high dropout rates, which contribute to juvenile delinquency. I wanted to do something about that. I had just finished a master's degree at Harvard, and I realized we had this passion in common to try and make a measurable change here."
Morris serves as the business part of the duo.
"Beth is the academic, the hands-on learning background," Morris says. "I have 18 years of experience in project management, marketing and event planning."
At Harvard she focused on prevention programming for at-risk populations and management of nonprofit organizations. The skills of the two complement one another.
After teaching for 26 years at the Early Learning Center at Antilles School, Marshall completed her doctoral studies at the University of Pennsylvania in a mid-career educational leadership program, and is currently finishing her dissertation. She has been an adjunct professor at the University of the Virgin Islands for the past 12 years, teaching in the Inclusive Early Childhood Education program. In fact, the reading class she just finished for the Week of the Young Child is taught by one of her former students.
Taking a look at some sobering statistics, the Exchange has its work cut out for it. Only 33.5 of Virgin Island fourth-grade students performed at or above proficient in reading as measured by the V.I. Territorial Assessments in 2006-2007. Third graders from low-income families have vocabularies of 4,000 words as opposed to 12,000 words in middle-income families nationwide.
In the Virgin Islands, 35.8 percent of children live in poverty, according to the 2007 CFVI Kids Count Data Book.
Morris and Marshall are undaunted by the figures.
"Our program is ambitious," Marshall says. "Every child can be successful."
How? It's not just the children, Marshall points out. The program can't succeed without the participation of families and teachers. To that end, the Exchange has partnered with the Penn Literacy Network (PLN), a comprehensive development curriculum-enhancement program for educators and parents.
PLN will conduct seminars focused on reading, writing, talking and listening across the curriculum, along with family literacy workshops where families receive one set of materials per workshop with books to start a home library.
In addition. PLN will offer mentoring programs led by Marshall, who will train local mentors.
The Exchange will also incorporate the Raise A Reader program,a national early literacy program that provides a low-cost method for communities to foster read-aloud routines in the homes of low-income families.
Each week, every child in the program is given a sturdy red bag filled with four developmental, multicultural children's books. The average cost per child served over a five-year period is $35, because the bags and books remain the property of the agency.
The Exchange became a V.I. not for profit last August, but it just received its 501 tax-exempt status so it can receive tax-exempt donations, which are sorely needed.
"The struggling economy has had a profound affect on philanthropy," Morris says. "The way we are handling it is by shifting strategy. Our pilot program now targets just 40 children and families."
Eventually the Exchange hopes to extend the program for students up to grade 12. It is located downtown at 18 Dronningens Gade. To donate, volunteer or for more information, call 777-READ (7323).
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