“It’s just another way for us to get more literacy into the homes of our families,” she said “It helps us build their literacy library at home.” She described the StoryMakers collection as “good, quality children’s books — what’s popular on the market.” “They are books we’ve used in the classroom with our children,” she said, “so we know they are books the kids like.” (See StoryMakers book list on Page 6.) Each local StoryMakers team is required to report on its interaction with parents and how they are distributing the materials. Local teams also are responsible for keeping track of who has benefited from the program. This information will go into a database to track the use of each book. In addition to an annual team training event and e-mail and phone contact with her teams, Clark travels across Montana to personally visit each StoryMakers community. She’s scheduled to visit AWARE in July. “Once we’ve been established a little longer, we would also like to get some parents to do random evaluations of the program as well,” she said. Network of partnerships Hopa Mountain’s StoryMakers program benefits from a network of partnerships through additional grants that help measure outcomes. Grants from the U.S. Department of Education through Women’s Opportunity and Resource Development (WORD) of Missoula, the Dennis and Phyllis Washington Foundation, the O.P. and W.E. Edwards Foundation, the Jerry Metcalf Foundation, the Montana Office of Public Instruction, and Hopa Mountain members support StoryMakers, including the costs of StoryMakers materials for parents,
doing and what we are doing are not the same. To address what children need in those early years, we have to think of the home environment as a naturally fun learning environment. Parents are caregivers, but they are also, importantly, their children’s first teachers.” Missing factor
travel, training, staff support and the purchase of more than 6,000 books for the Spring 2008 Gift Round. “Achievement gaps open long before children enter kindergarten or first grade,” Clark said. “Catching up is difficult, at best, and very costly to families, to communities, and to society at large. The biggest bang for every dollar and unit of effort in education today is in the preschool years.” StoryMakers deliberately focuses on helping preschoolers by creating an environment that is conducive to fun interaction with adults in the home, Clark said. “We align ourselves with the best research,” she said, “and the research overwhelmingly points to the importance of early-learned skills, especially language and preliteracy skills. But our system is not currently set up to take advantage of that research. What we should be
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hat happens very early to children impacts their future success ... or non-success ... in school and in life. — Linda Clark, StoryMakers director 5
“The truth is we’re missing a key factor when we focus almost all of our collective time and money on K-12,” she added. “What happens very early in life — before children enter school — impacts their chances for future success in school and in life. There is a cascading of cause and effect, beginning at the beginning of children’s lives.” Clark sees universal potential in the program. Her vision includes one day giving every child born in the state a “birth year book” with a gentle reminder to parents about the importance of their role in their children’s learning in the early years. The organization is also exploring how to improve the holdings of rural and tribal libraries so children in those areas will have an ongoing resource for reading. She sums up the mission with a powerful message: “Our tag line for the StoryMakers program is, ‘Words are gifts for life,’ and we want parents and children to know that is so true, especially in these early years.” Hopa Mountain is a Bozemanbased organization “investing in rural and tribal citizen leaders who are working to improve education, ecological health, and economic development in their hometowns.” “In a time of turbulence and change, it is more true than ever that knowledge is power” — John Fitzgerald Kennedy (American 35th US President (1961-63), 1917-1963)