The Alliance for Literacy is a partnership between schools, local businesses, and organizations all wishing to help increase literacy in Santa Fe and get kids hooked on reading. Students from Santa Fe School for the Arts & Sciences began this initiative and our school is the fiscal sponsor. Now student leaders from each school we visit are stepping forward to help us with this exciting outreach pr
ogram. We have middle and high school students from many schools working on the steering committee and taking charge of this initiative, including Capital High, Monte del Sol, ATC, New Mexico School for the Arts, Desert Academy, and Santa Fe Prep. Students have named the campaign, created a slogan and logo, and are creating each part of the drive. We want to empower kids to take charge of their own education and use positive peer pressure to get their friends reading. We don’t want to create more work for the schools- instead we want to get the whole community involved in supporting the schools and kid’s literacy. The Alliance for Literacy "Hooked on Books" campaign competed in the Albertsons 'Community Partners Challenge' and gathered more than 27,000 votes from the community to win $10,000 which will enable us to buy a large amount of prizes for the competitions. A group of students from the Alliance spoke with the SFPS principals last week and received great support from the Superintendent and all of the principals. Schools and PTAs are planning book drives and want to join in the competitions! Mayor Coss and the City of Santa Fe are committed to supporting this campaign in numerous ways and will soon proclaim the year 2012 as ‘The Year of the Book’. Facts: Too many children in our community fail to learn to read proficiently in the early grades. If reading remains difficult, students do not read independently and lack the hours of practice needed for mastery. By fourth grade, students fall behind as they are required to read for meaning. 40-50% of Santa Fe public school students drop out before graduation and New Mexico is ranked 48th in the nation in literacy based on standardized tests! 3,000 students drop out of school every day in America. This project benefits students by getting them hooked on the excitement of reading. The program has three tiers of intervention:
Tier One will get kids to enthusiastically engage in their own learning. We will offer many student-designed competitions and prizes that will get their peers excited about reading (Kindles, bikes, laptops, meeting celebrities, etc...) Many teachers and parents have seen how motivated kids get during wrapping paper and chocolate sales when there are great prizes involved. We feel this can happen with reading. The first contest has just ended and will award an iPad to the student who came up with the best ideas for ways to get their friends hooked on reading. The contest ran from October 15-November 15. We will offer a new contest each month. We hope to have powerful incentives to get kids to take a break from their video games and TV’s and to pick up a book. Surveys have confirmed that kids will read more if there is a compelling incentive. Businesses who purchase a prize or prizes will receive advertising on our website and page. Tier Two includes businesses and schools sponsoring book swap shelves in community locations such as supermarkets and other places where families often wait with their children. Alex Valdez has already given his ok to place a bookshelf in the Emergency Room at St. V’s. We have already begun collecting books and plan to have citywide book drives. A local non-profit, Partners in Education, has offered their warehouse to collect the books. SFPS has already donated 10 bookshelves to help get this part of the campaign started and we are talking with the chamber of commerce about soliciting sponsors for each bookshelf. We are also seeking businesses interested in making major donations to become official sponsors. Tier Three will provide specialized tutoring for students with reading challenges. Students with serious reading difficulties will be referred by teachers for afterschool reading instruction and/or a summer intensive staffed by expert teachers. Students will become more proficient in reading and therefore, all subjects. We are seeking funding for tutoring and prizes for the reading competition and hope that the whole community will start cleaning out their bookshelves and donating books. We hope that reading for fun will become contagious and “cool.” We will document the number of schools that participate in the campaign, the number of students who receive tutoring, and the number of participants in our afterschool and summer intensive reading programs. We have pre- and post-tutoring reading assessments for the students who receive reading tutoring. This campaign is reaching out to more than 37 schools in Santa Fe County, including The School for the Deaf, the Santa Fe Indian School, and surrounding pueblo and non-public schools. Call us at 505-438-8585 if you have any questions…. The Alliance for Literacy
[email protected]
www.nmallianceforliteracy.org
