FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

April 28 – Covington, KY.

Mayor Joe Meyer of Covington, Kentucky and his team have implemented an innovative approach to Early Literacy. Read Ready Covington is a city-wide coalition that engages all sectors of the community in maximizing early literacy efforts. Their coalition recognizes Footsteps2Brilliance as a vital component in its collective impact approach, especially during this past year as part of Covid-19 virtual learning. Read Ready Covington’s goals include increasing the percentage of children who enter kindergarten ready to learn and read proficiently by third grade. These goals align perfectly with Footsteps2Brilliance resources and are boosted by another City of Covington initiative called Covington Connect, a citywide free WIFI network to address the digital divide.

Washington, D.C. - On Tuesday, Feb. 9th at 3:30 EST, The Campaign for Grade Level Reading will showcase Dr. Barbara Nemko, Napa County Superintendent of Schools and Footsteps2Brilliance, to discuss how Napa County and other organizations throughout the nation have used technology to prepare children for kindergarten and stem learning loss caused by the pandemic.

Hawthorne School District is pleased to announce that it has received a grant from GRoW @ Annenberg in the amount of $100,000 for the innovative work that Superintendent Dr. Helen Morgan is doing to support citywide literacy. This grant will be used to extend the successful literacy partnership the district developed with Footsteps2Brilliance®.  It provides access to Footstep2Brilliance’s proven bilingual pre-K to 3rd grade literacy solution to every family in the city of Hawthorne.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – Footsteps2Brilliance CEO, Ilene Rosenthal, has joined the ALAS Advisory Council based in Washington, DC.  ALAS, the Association of Latino Administrators and Superintendents, is committed to serving the educational needs of all students with an emphasis on Latin/o/a/x youth by building capacity, promoting best practices, and transforming educational institutions.

What should literacy instruction look like in a preschool classroom? As high-stakes testing puts more pressure on teachers and students, the spotlight is shifting to evaluate how we are preparing students in the years before kindergarten. Expectations for our early learners are going up. Many districts are struggling with how to help more children enter kindergarten ready and on a path to academic success. While it may be tempting to transform preschool classrooms to look more like kindergarten, the research shows that there are two literacy strategies that are proven to be developmentally appropriate and massively impactful for future reading success.

This graphic from the U.S. Department of Education illustrates these two practices in action. Based on the findings of What Works Clearinghouse, phonological awareness training and interactive and dialogic reading are effective strategies to put preschoolers on the path to reading success.