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SUPERINTENDENT'S LITERACY AND EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION |
April, 2006
Rick Gantman, Superintendent
Literacy and Early Childhood Education for a Healthy Community—Research on language acquisition, child development and brain growth all clearly indicate that the experiences a child has from birth to five years old have a tremendous influence on their childhood and adult literacy levels. In fact, it is said that a parent of a newborn can choose what their child’s academic performance in school will be by the way the parent interacts with the infant.
The District has had an interest in early childhood education for several years and has identified it as a topic in our strategic plan.
We are currently exploring the possibility of implementing a program called Ready! For Kindergarten. The program is a series of classes for parents of children from birth to kindergarten age. The program offers parents a wonderful approach to interacting with their young children that has proven to stimulate language acquisition and has showed significant results in academic performance in later years.
Please watch for more information about the program and help me rally community enthusiasm and widespread parent participation in the program. Even if you are not the parent of a birth to five-year old child, you can help by getting young parents to consider participating in the program. You can also help by learning more about the program and letting me know how to promote the program to ensure high levels of participation. I believe I am stating the obvious when I say that if we can help more parents get their children off to a good start in school our entire community will benefit!
~Rick Gantman~
