April is the month to celebrate American libraries

Whether it's supporting patrons with digital literacy classes, becoming a new telehealth hotspot, or hosting literacy tutoring nights, American libraries are hubs for learning and civic life. Especially in rural communities where meeting places might be lacking, the local library can be a welcoming gathering place.

To celebrate all the strength, smarts and social connections libraries across the U.S. contribute to their local regions and patrons, April 19 to 25 is set aside as National Library Week, with the theme 'Find Your Joy.'

How do individuals 'find their joy' at the library? That depends. Some kids love story time and the weekly craft, while other youngsters do puzzles or drag out all the games. A teen might relish the time reading alone in a cozy corner. One adult patron might love their library's new 3-D printer, while another loves being able to check out the latest mystery book for free. 

For school librarians, the entire month of April is set aside to remind students, parents, teachers and education professionals of the role libraries play in school learning and educational spaces.

Ways to celebrate libraries of all sizes in April:

• Participate in National Library Week (April): Attend special events, such as author signings, workshops and book club meetings hosted by local branches.
• Support library staff: Celebrate National Library Workers Day (Tuesday of National Library Week) by thanking librarians and staff for their contributions.
• Get involved and advocate: Attend "Take Action for Libraries Day" (Thursday of National Library Week) to support funding and programs. Volunteer or join a "Friends of the Library" group.
• Use and promote services: Visit the library to check out items, attend digital literacy workshops, or explore online resources such as e-books and databases.
• Support intellectual freedom: Celebrate Right to Read Day (Monday of National Library Week) by checking out and reading books that have been challenged or banned.
• Read up on a Checkout Challenge: Some libraries run challenges during the week to encourage borrowing items (physically or digitally)

Rural Missouri classrooms were the first to use a promising new way to teach students how to read

Ashley Wood, a second-year kindergarten teacher in Phelps County, Missouri, is learning 
to teach her students reading with the new coaching model. (Photo via Missouri Independent)

Teachers in rural Missouri are helping students learn to read with a model that applies the science of reading to student learning, paired with teacher support and coaching. 

Through the Rural Schools Early Literacy Collaborative, literacy coaches from the national nonprofit TNTP "work directly with teachers in [select Missouri] schools, helping them implement structured reading instruction grounded in the science of reading," reports William Hehemann of the Missouri Independent.

Part of the effort includes coaches trained in reading sciences who regularly visit classrooms to observe teachers in action and model foundational lessons with students for practicing teachers. Hehemann explains, "Teachers receive feedback tied directly to classroom instruction. Coaching conversations are specific, practical and immediately applicable, accelerating growth in instructional practice."

The RSELC is working to improve reading proficiency across the state, where a majority of students are struggling. Hehemann reports, "According to the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress, only 27% of Missouri fourth-grade students scored at or above the proficient reading level . . . . Improving early literacy is critical because reading proficiency by the end of third grade is closely linked to long-term academic success."

Early data show that students taught with the coaching model have made significant strides in reading skills. "In Rolla Public Schools, more than 94% of first-grade students demonstrated year-long growth in reading after coaching support began," Hehemann writes. "In Dent-Phelps R-III School District, the share of first graders reading at grade level increased from 25.5% in the fall to 89.4% by the spring."

What began as an experiment in one rural Missouri county is "expanding across the state," Hehemann reports. "The coaching model is being implemented in 60 schools statewide. . . . Education leaders say the expansion reflects growing recognition that improving reading outcomes requires not only a strong curriculum but also sustained coaching and support for teachers."

W.Va.'s Jennifer Garner bucks Hollywood trend, trying to ally with Trump to promote rural causes

Jennifer Garner at the National Governors Association
winter meeting in Washington on Saturday. (AP photo)

While many Hollywood liberals have shunned President Trump, actress Jennifer Garner, a West Virginia native who often visits Appalachia to promote causes such as early education for the rural poor, has not given up on the Trump administration, Paul Kane reports for The Washington Post. "Garner, a true-blue Democrat who campaigned for Hillary Clinton last year and held a fundraiser for Barack Obama in 2008, is taking a unique approach: pushing a cause that would benefit the new administration’s political base," rural Americans.

Garner "spent the weekend lobbying the town’s pillars of power to support early education for poor rural children," Kane writes. "She spent Friday on Capitol Hill meeting dozens of top staff members. On Saturday, she delivered the keynote address before the annual National Governors Association winter meeting here. A potential sit-down with Ivanka Trump, who is advocating for more funding for child care, fell apart because of scheduling conflicts, but Garner remained optimistic about a face-to-face discussion soon."

Garner "sees an opportunity to hold the president accountable for the pledges he made to the country’s rural working class," Kane writes. She told the Post, “I’m looking forward to helping him make good on what they saw as promises, a mandate from him, that he was going to make their lives better." Garner said some of her friends “want to turn their back to this administration," but she told him, “If he’s willing to help the poor kids who got him elected, then let’s do it. They certainly think he’s going to."

For the past nine years Garner "has been on the board of Save the Children, a nonprofit organization. Mark Shriver is president of its political advocacy arm, Save the Children Action Network," Kane writes. "Save the Children is known primarily for its international projects, but it has also built out a niche focus on U.S. education programs, particularly in poor rural communities." Garner and Shriver have pushed for Congress to fund literacy programs that include all-day kindergarten and last year Garner was in West Virginia to help raise money after devastating floods.

Actress Jennifer Garner lobbies Ky. lawmakers for Save the Children work in Appalachia

Jennifer Garner (Courier-Journal
photo by Matt Herp)

Actress Jennifer Garner told Kentucky legislators Tuesday that once she became a Hollywood star with the ability to be a philanthropist, "I knew exactly what I wanted it to be. I knew it had to be kids in rural America."

Garner, who grew up in West Virginia, asked lawmakers "to preserve $1 million in funding for Save the Children’s early childhood and literacy programs that serve more than 12,000 Kentucky children," Valarie Honeycutt Spears reports for the Lexington Herald-Leader. "She joined Save the Children Action Network President Mark Shriver at Senate and House committee meetings to discuss the value of high-quality early learning."

Shriver and Garner, who is on the organization's board, had breakfast with new Republican Gov. Matt Bevin. Bevin has proposed a 9 percent budget cut for most agencies, including preschool services, but his plan has $941,400 for the Save the Children program, and Senate President Robert Stivers, "who held a news conference with Shriver later Tuesday, said, 'I think there is a high likelihood that it would survive' through the legislature's budget process," Tom Loftus of The Courier-Journal reports. "Save the Children programs have shown stronger results in Kentucky than in any other state in helping kids from birth through the third grade, Shriver said."

Myrtle Beach writer is 2013-14 Nieman Fellow in Community Journalism; will spend year at Harvard

Isaac Bailey of The Sun News in Myrtle Beach, S.C., has been named the 2013-14 Donald W. Reynolds Nieman Fellow in Community Journalism, meaning that he will join 11 other American journalists and 12 from other countries at Harvard University for a year beginning in August.

Bailey, an award-winning journalist who has worked at The Sun News for nearly 16 years, will study the intersection of literacy, football, race and the economy in the South, particularly in South Carolina's Georgetown and Horry counties, with a goal of using the research to understand efforts to battle illiteracy and improve cross-racial understanding in the region.

The Nieman Foundation, which administers the oldest fellowship program for journalists in the world, aims to promote and elevate the standards of journalism and educate those specially qualified for the field. The Donald W. Reynolds Foundation, created by a community newspaper publisher, funds the fellowship for a community journalist each year.

Entitlement program keeps some families in cycle of poverty, liberal New York Times columnist says

In the midst of debate about the "fiscal cliff," cuts and changes in entitlement programs like Medicaid, welfare and Supplemental Security Income have been discussed as cost-saving measures. Liberals say entitlement programs help millions of struggling people every year; conservatives say entitlements are abused, costing taxpayers millions that could be spent more effectively elsewhere and fostering a culture of dependency.

Nicholas Kristof, left, a liberal columnist for The New York Times, explores the issue with this glimpse of a facet of SSI: "Parents here in Appalachian hill country pulling their children out of literacy classes. Moms and dads fear that if kids learn to read, they are less likely to qualify for a monthly check for having an intellectual disability." In Breathitt County, Kentucky, he writes, $698 a month "goes a long way."

"This is painful for a liberal to admit, but conservatives have a point when they suggest that America’s safety net can sometimes entangle people in a soul-crushing dependency," Kristof writes. "Some young people here don’t join the military (a traditional escape route for poor, rural Americans) because it’s easier to rely on food stamps and disability payments. Antipoverty programs also discourage marriage . . . Most wrenching of all are the parents who think it’s best if a child stays illiterate, because then the family may be able to claim a disability check each month."

Kristof does not document how many such cases he found in Appalachia, nor does he cite military enlistment data. His headline, "Profiting from a child's illiteracy," does not take into account the circumstances of individual families. But he quotes the woman who runs the literacy program and a local school official, who says, "The greatest challenge we face as educators is how to break that dependency on government. In second grade, they have a dream. In seventh grade, they have a plan."

In a 2009 piece for the Times, University of Richmond political science professor Jennifer Erkulwater noted, "Between 1984 and 1990, Congress loosened SSI requirements, especially for children with mental disabilities. It also said it wouldn't cut off recipients it thought weren't disabled anymore unless it could prove this. As a result, it should come as no surprise that, compared to two decades ago, it is much easier today for younger adults and children ... to receive disability benefits and to stay on the disability rolls longer once found eligible."

Because of those loosened rules, 55 percent of disabilities covered by SSI are "fuzzier intellectual disabilities," Kristof writes. He reports that 1.2 million low-income children, 8 percent of the total, are on SSI. It's a $9 billion annual burden for taxpayers, he writes, but "It can be even worse for children whose families have a huge stake in their failing school." He cites a 2009 study that found two-thirds of SSI kids who turn 18 transfer into the adult program: "They may never hold a job in their entire lives and are condemned to a life of poverty on the dole — and that’s the outcome of a program intended to fight poverty."

Kristof acknowledges that he's no expert on poverty, and says fighting it is complex, "But for me, a tentative lesson from the field is that while we need safety nets, the focus should be instead on creating opportunity, and, still more difficult, on creating an environment that leads people to seize opportunities." (Read more)

UPDATE, Jan. 29, 2013: New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan criticizes Kristoff for not reporting the issue of poverty and federal assistance programs more rigorously. She writes in her column, "The Public Editor's Journal," that Kristof "does plenty of shoe-leather reporting for his columns," and that he travels all over the world and talks to many people about the issues he addresses. But this time, "he did not talk to the primary sources, the parents of poor and developmentally disabled children," Sullivan writes. "Given the provocative nature of his opening statement and its importance in setting up the column's thesis, it should have been completely solid." After reading all the points, counterpoints, objections and defenses in relations to Kristof's column, she writes: "I believe that some of the column's assertions were based on too little direct evidence or used statistical information that is, at the very least, open to interpretation."