Good morning, I'm Clara with the library in Michigan and it's my honor today to serve
as moderator for early learning.
We know it's the foundation for everything we're talking about today.
Before I introduce the panel list, I would like to recognize the fact that since 2013,
IMLS has invested $8.5 million in early learning projects!
Yes which includes the development of the growing minds report which called upon our
policymakers and educators to fully utilize public libraries in their early learning efforts.
This investment is helping to build and sustain the capacity of our public libraries to not
only offer research based early learning services and parent education programs incorporating
best practices but to also encourage them to reach out to form and sustain partnerships
and relationships at the local, regional, state, and national level around early learning.
With an emphasis on reaching our high needs parents.
It is through these partnerships and relationships that we will have success through collective
impact.
Out reach efforts continue around the country towards the goal of placing public libraries
as a valued asset within the early learning eco system.
That eco system includes families, communities, educators, early learning systems, social
service providers, policymakers, funders and it goes on and on.
At a time when early learning is a national priority.
So our panelist today are all very well informed and have insights into these out reach efforts
and will share them with all of you.
As well as with when they're giving the presentations, they'll also provide recommendations for IMLS
for future funding potential projects.
I would like to introduce the panel in the order they are speaking.
Diane Hutchins who is the consultant and project manager at the Washington state library.
Best Crist at the youth and family services consultant at the Colorado state library and
Kathleen Deerr who is the national coordinator for family place libraries.
We'll start with Diane.
>> I'm happy to share what Washington has been doing.
I would like to speak off the top of my head but I'll go on for two hours so I'm going
to stick to my script here.
Telling funders and decision makers libraries matter is no longer enough.
How can libraries prove their programs actually play a valuable role in the education of young
children?
Project views, I love this graphic was supported by two groups related to the eye school at
the University of Washington.
It was the first research project to see the successful impact of early learning to prove
their value as community early learning partners.
They used a portion of the grants to the state's funding to provide support for project views
by covering the funding gap between the grant to continue research.
It also provided support for boots on the ground that have participating in the study.
Project view research was statewide and involved a cast of literally thousands.
720 spread sheets were created in the process.
There was 270 coding hours involved.
There were faulty SD cards state of the libraries.
There was 40 librarians randomly sampled.
They involved multiple disciplines including not only library and information studies but
also people from the field of education and developmental psychology.
It used scientific methodology.
It linked observed behaviors of librarians and childrens to the state's early learning
standards which at the time were the benchmarks and they have been revised to be the guidelines.
The study improved that children's early learning out comes were effective when delivering story
times.
There were great numbers and Washington state is a state library is a member of the early
learning public library partnership, we call it ELPLP which receives support from thrive
Washington, a public private partnership.
The ELPLP provides a frame work that helps public libraries to be more visible as essential
partners in early learning.
They provide the pool for which library staff were drawn at random to be in the experimental
groups.
Without their participation, the field operations which scientifically demonstrated that public
library story times do help children learn to read would not have been possible.
As expressed by author of radical change and principle investigator for project views,
partnership make views possible.
Partnership with the ELPLP and the foundation of early learning now merged with thrive Washington
continued as acting as a liaison as providing resources and valuable insight and ideas during
the planning of the grant.
The ELPLP and the foundation for early learning have committed themselves to the success of
the grant and I love it was funny because she would give me reports I would have to
submit for library development and I was sworn to secrecy there was certain things I could
not reveal because it would taint the research.
You may have heard of this.
It's the project views and it began a phase national roll out in the state of Washington
in April and it's going to add four more pilot states this fall.
It should be announced oh, gee.
I'm going to say that it's been made possible through a national leadership grope to OCLC
which is the lead partner and the partners of Washington state library.
We are also developing a new project all all aboard which is going to give a statewide
program that they can incorporate to help ensure that all children are ready to learn
when they enter school.
The program that is going to be designed using input from early learning partners and the
focus is going to be on 60 percent of the children cared for by family and neighbors.
I do have three takeaways today.
We want to encourage funding to support collaboration among libraries as well as collaboration with
external non library early learning partners to maybe each state could have their own learning
public partnerships and regional coalitions which has really helped Washington.
Provide more grants for early learning research including the linkage of library best practices
to state standards and also, mentorships through libraries on childhood development and the
guidance of use of media by children.
Expanding the body of proof will help elevate foundation and gain respect by the practitioners
of equal effect.
We also need to reach the non users.
Ask communities how libraries can help them.
Are current programs relevant to their needs.
Support funding to market research to assess what the needs are for parents, caregivers
and early learning provider and organizations and determine how the community's library
can meet those needs.
Take a look at early learning documents.
Be critical.
Look at early learning plan state standards.
Also, look at conference announcements, early learning committee members.
This happened in Washington.
Look to see if there's libraries involved.
Ask those involved in early learning programs and education if they're familiar with things
like summer reading programs and library out reach activities.
To quote a recent announcement and this came out a few weeks ago for an early learning
conference, who should attend?
Professionals who care for or work with young children and parents.
Well, the list covered a wide spectrum of disciplines and providers.
Guess which group was missing as usual?
Librarians.
>> Good morning, I'm so pleased to be here to share our project in which we're really
trying to reach and serve low income families with young children.
I'm going to start with a tiny bit of history about the project because I think it helps
with context.
A couple of years ago we had this idea to start a statewide baby library card program
to get library cards in the hands of babies when their first born.
We thought this was a great way to promote early literacy activities right from birth.
The importance of reading to your children from birth and we especial wanted to reach
low income families with this program.
I started to do research with this.
What are the best ways to go about reaching low income families?
I found very little.
There's very little in the research about how to best serve this particular audience.
So we decided to take a step back, not pursue the statewide library program and instead
apply for a national leadership program and fill the gap.
We did a program called spell, supporting parents through early literacy through libraries.
In the application for that grant, we introduced Joan and Emily who are fictional parents both
of two month old baby bows and we said that Joan lives in a low income household neighborhood
and Emily is in a professional middle class neighborhood and while the research shows
that Joan and Emily are likely to be both good parents, the research demonstrates that
Emily is much more likely than Joan to talk at length to and with her baby.
Read to him more frequently and for a longer period of time.
Take him more often to the library and have more books at home and that would make him
more likely to succeed in kindergarten, throughout school and life.
So we wanted a project that would engage both the parents and really empower them to engage
in early literacy activities everyday so that both of the sons would be equally likely to
succeed.
So with that we had an excellent partner, Mary who is with us here today and her colleague,
Don both from the University of Denver and we did research.
We did a literature review and scan of reaching the audience both within and outside of the
library community and then we conducted some original research with surveys and focus groups
with these low income parents and we're really focusing on parents with children birth through
three to really target those first critical years.
What we did with each finding is we turned it into a really practical recommendation
that library staff can easily follow.
So this is what we call our blueprint and it is blue.
This is just the front page but I just wanted you to see the categories that we came up
with here.
On the left these are things that libraries and really other organizations too as we found
out can accomplish within their facility.
So these are things like train your staff in cultural proficiency.
There's one, this is a big one but we're having a lot of success with it is ending fines and
fees on picture books.
This is hard to accomplish.
We have seen a lot of movement in this.
This is very exciting.
The middle section is really on out reach.
We know that not all parents will ever be able to come to the library, right?
So we have to do a better job of promoting and getting out working with organizations
to partner and collaborate.
And then the column on the right is home practice.
This is what we hope the first two columns will achieve, these everyday early literacy
activities.
So then we're able to get our second national leadership grant this October.
This two year grant will allow us to test our findings in eight libraries and also train
library staff across Colorado.
The libraries have had the ability to create a program that is applicable for their libraries
specifically and their communities.
We gave them some grant and matching funds to equal $15,000 each and with this small
amount of money and training and our research findings, they have been able to come up with
great programs that are really already, they just started them in February and they're
already having some really significant impacts.
So through the process of both of these spell grants, we do have some takeaways.
One is that more research is needed in reaching low income families.
Spell was a great start.
We could not address all of the questions, of course, and we actually raised more questions.
And then training, the second part is training library staff on those findings, very important.
Another take away is that libraries need some additional funding for removing barriers.
That is one of the important findings of our research.
These low income parents have a lot of barriers to using the library so funding for things
like training and cultural proficiency.
Improving their collections with wordless books and materials and language common in
the community.
They need to be able to promote their services.
We found so many parents didn't know what the library had to offer so that is important.
A bigger materials budget to allow them to end fines and fees on boards and picture books
and staffing to provide programs and times that are more convenient to working parents.
You know, the 10:30 story time is great but so many parents can't get there if they're
working and it's not conducive to them.
Along with that, of course, some families will never be able to come to the library
so libraries really need more funding to do out reach to this audience.
Funding for staffing, training, travel, and materials for out reach.
But the third take away is quickly here, again, to reiterate what Dianne said, we really need
more collaboration.
Some of the partners these eight libraries are working with are a native American tribe,
a migrant program, subsidized child care centers, local United Way and parenting grouping and
these are having significant impacts.
These groups already work with the low income populations.
Some of them are doing home visits.
When the library connects, it makes such a difference.
So I see my time is up.
Thank you!
Please, the website is www.
Spellproject.weebly.com.
I invite you to see the project.
Thank you!
>> Good morning.
I'm very honored to be here today and I'm going to conclude this panel by focusing on
early learning of babies and toddlers which is what Beth was just talking about but I'm
going to do it through the lens of a family placed library.
Family placed libraries model has been in existence for over 15 years.
We have about 400 sites in 29 states and it's rooted in research in early brain development
and a family centered philosophy of service.
Mainly that the family is the constant in the young child's life and has the most impact
on early development.
Much can be achieved in a climate of mutual respect and, working in collaboration with
other family serving agencies to create a strong network of community support.
Parents need support.
Whether the parent is coming from a high income family or middle income family and especially
low income families, every parent needs support.
So as this child shows, the architecture or the wiring of a developing brain happens at
an astonishing quickly developing brain.
This is done in the first few years of life.
At Harvard states, scientific knowledge on this issue is crystal clear.
Cognitive, physical, emotional competence evolve hand in hand.
They are inter dependent.
One doesn't happen and one happens here which is what happened when I went to school in
the 70s.
Don't worry about the emotional but the academic achievement.
So when the supportive environment is provided, the emerging structure is sound and all parts
work together.
So we need to recognize that school redness is more than just academic skills.
Children need to come together with certain self regulation, skills already, so they can
develop executive function and they start out as babies and toddlers being curious and
they want to solve problems.
That little kid that is seven month old who keeps throws the cereal off their highchair
tray is not doing it on purpose.
It's doing because they learn something about object permanence.
Something can be out of my line of vision but they still exist.
So I also want to say I'm using the word parent this morning to talking about all of the caregivers
and not just the parent because we know so many children are in child care situations.
So what we did is look at the essential role in parents of providing secured bonding relationships
and the full range of experiences that produce well wired brains.
We looked at what individuals can do to support, and engage parents as the child's first primary
teacher.
We wanted to provide a holistic frame work for library services that addresses the early
development of the whole child starting at parent and the parents.
So meeting with parents and working with child development, family support and education
experts, some key components emerged.
The first is libraries need to develop non judgmental welcoming permanence spaces within
the children area designed specifically for parents and the youngsters which includes
toys, books and resources for babies and toddlers and comfortable seating and things for parents.
We want everybody to be there.
So it's a place they can come and they can feel welcome and those who have or have had
young children know there's not a lot of places in our society where that is absolutely a
welcoming place.
The second thing is, you want programs that are engaging and developmentally appropriate
and meet the needs and interests of parents as well as their little ones.
Programs in which parents get to meet and form relationships with other parents.
And the librarian and librarians not only model great practices but can connect with
the individuals and connect them with the services available in the library and the
broader community that can help strengthen their family.
And the part of this, part of this is partnering with the social health and museums.
Museums are doing a lot in this area so we just partnered with about two years ago with
the childrens museum in Manhattan.
We have the play and grow.
We tested transmedium math program and we have done all of that together.
There's a lot going on that we can work collaboratively with.
I would like to think of libraries as being a fabric of community support.
You have all of these different agencies and organizations with threads running through
it and libraries are the golden thread.
So compared to traditionally library offerings, this is a major paradigm shift and what we
have been able to see is that even though, many many libraries and people who work in
libraries are still not comfortable with very young children and they think it's okay to
have a baby toddler program in this room over here, but we don't want it on the public floor,
that's a little bit too noisy and messy.
So we're in the third year of our grant and we wanted to look at a comprehensive frame
work for library and services and parents and young children and looking at the key
library as an institution and partner.
The observation of our 25 partner libraries support the findings of all of or past regional
evaluations and it's really transformative.
Between the comprehensive training follow up Webinars and ongoing technical assistance,
we have seen changes not only in spaces and programs and collections, but instead in attitudes,
skills and behaviors in regard to working with parents and very young children and partnering
with all of the other agencies that serve them.
If we look at what parents are doing very quickly and I'm not going to read all of this,
people are coming, they're staying longer, they are including and filling less isolated
and they feel better informed, they feel more confident in their role and they're actually
spending more time talking and playing, reading and singing.
So we want to fund supportive collaborations among libraries, health and human services
organizations and museums and then we also want to provide funding to library staff to
they can increase their capacity in key areas.
Play is vital for adults and young children.
That's how they learn.
So we really want them to understand the connection between play and learning to understand how
they can share this with parents and actual incorporate it into their programs and also
incorporate it on their floor engagements with parents.
The other thing librarians need to have is parent out reach and engagement activities.
So many people don't know how to do this yet.
One last thing and I know my time is up but we really need to look at funding projects
with successful home visiting programs such as the parent child program and family nurse
partnerships.
They're already working with families that are very very at risk and we can work together
with them to reach those families so thank you very much!
So now after those wonderful presentations we're going to open this up to questions from
the audience.
Are there any questions for our panelists?
>> Hi, Ruth from Syracuse University.
I'd like to first commend the panel for a wonderful presentation in a very critical
area but I would like to hear you expand a little bit more on how you are addressing
the needs of children with disabilities who may come to your programs or are you?
>> Okay, maybe I can get started.
Can you hear me?
When we have looked at setting up environments and spaces, we make sure that it is really
available to everybody so we will have things that are specific for children with disabilities,
we have toys with different kinds of switches, we have a whole toy lending library for children
with disabilities so we sometimes have PT and OT services done right in the library
or they have someone accompany them when they come to the child workshops.
So we find that the parents are really very very supportive and they think this is wonderful
because there's very few places in their communities where they can go and feel their children
are welcomed and they're welcomed and they don't have to worry about an autistic child
acting out.
We have so many people on the autism spectrum who are identified and they're sitting one
on one, playing with the train, building blocks and their parents see all of the other kids
in the room and say, wow, that really is something that is not quite right here.
They meet somebody from that organization and they're on the floor playing and talking
and just generally, like you would at home in your living room and then they're more
open to go and get their child evaluated and find out what the services are because they're
comfortable because they have already met this person from that organization.
>> As for spell, I would say that is definitely another need in the research area.
We did not address that.
Our research was more general into how to reach just families that are low income.
We did not delve into the disabilities question and I think that's an excellent need for research.
>> This is Dianne from the Washington state library in talking to doctor, when she was
talking about the future of project views, she mentioned A typical population as the
next phase of her work.
I don't know where that is right now.
People are kind of regrouping since her demise last year but one thing, again, a partnership
we can use is the Washington state library and I had suggested to her that part of our
library is the Washington state, talking book and braille library and using the children's
services librarian as part of the project partners and again, using the social services
organizations within Washington.
We could utilize those early learning coalitions too.
It's a nice thing we have in Washington where we partner with the head start people and
others who are serving diverse communities and hope to use them to also reach out for
that matter.
Thank you!
>> Any other questions?
>> Hello.
Greg Michaels, I'm with Madison public library.
We're doing a lot of study into getting literacy into the homes.
That's where we see for undeserved populations, low income.
How do you deal with the challenges of the parent or the caregiver having literacy issues
and how do you implement an early literacy program with that element?
>> Okay, I'll jump in first.
That's a great question.
It's definitely one that needs to be addressed.
The spell libraries that we're working with are eight partner libraries have come across
this issue and they stress all of the ways in which you can share early literacy activities
with parents with low literacy.
For instance, sharing word list picture books with your child or reading a picture book,
even if you can't read the words, you can read it through the pictures and tell the
story in your own words.
Singing is a great way to share early literacy activities with a child that doesn't require
reading.
So there are lots of ways still to do that.
That is really a key component of our spell project is to teach parents and point out
things they're already doing in their daily lives and how they can do them a little more
proactively in order to engage them in these great early literacy building skills.
>> I'd like to add to that.
We need to help parents learn to play with their kids.
Adults don't play.
They don't even play with the one year olds and the infants.
The back and forth with the gaga and you're looking right in their eyes, that's the beginning
of language and literacy and you don't have to be able to read fluently to be able to
do that so we want to talk about the things that I are doing and hopefully encourage them
to do more.
And when we get them into the library for a play base program, they don't feel intimidated
because oh, it's just, I can play.
I can let me kid play with the blocks and then they find out, you know what?
I can't just sit back here and watch them play.
I'm supposed to be engaged with them.
There's no chairs in the room.
Finally get down on the floor and play.
When we get to know the families and we find it out because they tell you more than you
want to know once you get to know them, over the weeks, they can trust you and know you
and then you can say, we have an ESL program or a GED program or resume writing because
we can make the family stronger if we can build up their ability to be economically
self sufficient, get them their skills and then we can see better outcomes for the children.
This is not just about what we do in the programs and the kids but it's connecting them to all
of the other services so holistically, we're trying to help the family.
>> I'll one more thing.
It's funny Beth talked about using pictures for parents who have low literacy skills and
this is a topic of discussion in the super charged story sessions where the orientation
people were not training suggested using pictures if parents have literacy problems.
One project that thrived Washington has come up with is called, love, talk, play, where
you do playful things your children to help them learn and all aboard for kindergarten,
we're looking at little bite size bits via texting and make it very user friendly for
parents because right now, they're really daunting.
>> Helen with the partnership with 21st century learning.
Are you looking at ways these great programs are developing some of the students or children's
skills in terms of like creative, critical thinking, kind of executive function, you
know, just self discipline and management, any of those kinds of skills?
>> Well, the state libraries all aboard for kindergarten is looking at the project views,
looking the data that looks at where kids are before they enter kindergarten and it
addresses the six domains of language, literacy, mathematics, cognitive, social emotional and
physical.
So looking at the whole child and addressing where are there gaps in the skills and hopefully
to customize things so we can develop these tools for families by the community where
those learning gaps are.
>> In our spell project, we're focused more on parent behavior so that's going to be the
focus of our evaluation rather than actual child outcomes.
>> And the same is true for family place.
We're really looking at transformation within the libraries, within the library staff and
just having the administration be on board.
We require that an administrator now come with the children's librarian to a comprehensive
four day training and I know they don't participate in the seven hours of follow up, they probably
don't do that but we want them to really understand it and see that this is really economic development.
If you look at what's going on, if you want to have a good workforce 25 years from now
or 20 years from now, you need to be investing in investment because it is a pittance when
it becomes to when they need more service.
>> If you want to see the good math for that, there's a website for that, an economist from
Chicago who has done wonderful articles.
>> Laura Damon, libraries and community project and a youth librarian in my day job so I'm
just curious about prenatal classes and sort of childbirth classes and whether there are
partnerships that you know of between libraries and those classes and if you could speak to
that whether that's through hospitals or for low income families as well.
>> Well, we run a program at middle country.
It's not something that's across all of the libraries that are family placed libraries
but a lot of them do this.
We talk about it and they get to see it live.
It's called baby bump.
It literally is for pregnant women and we coordinate with the hospital where they have
a nurse come in and talk about what is going on.
A lot of times they make arrangements so they can do the preview of the hospital and the
birthing rooms and all of those kinds of things and then we talk about siblings and how you
can get the sibling ready for the new baby that's coming.
So yeah, there's a little bit of that that's starting to go on.
>> In our spell research, we found that probably the best time to reach parents is actually
before they become parents when they're expecting parents with an early literacy message and
the message about the library.
So that end, there's a public library in Colorado that is partnering now with a reach out and
read clinic ha is doing prenatal classes.
Talking to them about the library services and the importance over early literacy and
there's several libraries in Colorado and I know around the country who do a community
baby shower once a year.
This is an excellent program where they invite all of the expectant parents to the library
and they actually have a baby shower.
Often they will invite community organizations to come and have tables so that the expectant
parents can see all of the other services that are available to them.
And often, we know we have heard from these programs that this is the only baby shower
that some low income parents attend and it usually, depend on the library's funding,
it might come with a little bib or some gift, hopefully a board book but I would love to
see more in that arena for sure.
>> And I know there's libraries in Washington that have done the community baby showers
so businesses got come from activities and at the library had a minimal investment which
is a win to win for everybody.
>> I was curious if any of you would want to speak to the issue of early learning and
digital production and digital tools.
There's a lot of approaches.
There's some controversy.
Libraries are a great place to work with digital tools but the cross over to early learning
is sometimes an interesting complexity for people.
I'm just wondering where your programs fit around that issue.
>> I think the panelist had this discussion over dinner.
There's a prevalent notion that children under the age of two shouldn't have media screen,
tablets and I phones what have you.
I'm leaning in that direction from the research I have seen coming out of the University of
Washington and the eye labs, that there's a lot more learning going on when you have
the human being, I don't know if it's body language or eye contact.
I think they say eye contact but you can use a tablet but have a human being with that
tablet and not just put the tablet in the child's hands.
They did an interesting study on learning mandrin and Chinese and the child who is with
the human being learned a lot more than the child who is just plopped in front of the
television set or whatever the media was and learn that way.
>> I think what we have to do in our society, you can't even bump gas without a screen in
your face.
It makes me crazy.
In our society, I think it's really not realistic to think that kids are not going to be in
front of screens.
That's a given.
We may say this is the best thing and I truly believe that in all early childhood educators
believe it and everyone who works with young children and family believes it too.
What I think we have to do is help parents find a balance that the iPhone, the I pad
is not a baby sitter.
If you're going to use it with somebody, then if your looking at something and you're talking,
just like you said it works that way but if you use it as a baby sitter, it's not going
to work and it shouldn't take the place of floor time and face time and constant talking
and singing and book sharing and playing with kids because that's how kids under three,
how all of us really learn.
I can watch a video on how to hit a golf ball, until I'm out there, I might have somebody
who says, do this or try this and I'm not really going to learn it the same way.
I think this is very true.
>> I will add, one of the project view researchers, I sent my speech to them for their comments
and one did ask for funding for studying the use of media by families and children.
That is their wish list, please.
We need research on this, more research.
>> We have had the sesame street workshop people come and talk to our librarians and
other early child development.
They talking about how kids swipe and do this and that.
When you have really young kids, books, they just go back and forth with the pages and
they play back and forth but you're still looking at what's happening and you can talk
about it.
When they're swiping and the technology takes over what you want them to be looking at and
learning, that's when I see there's a problem.
>> And I will just say that the association for library service to children has just put
out a white paper on just this topic.
I think it was just issued yesterday or the day before.
So you may want to refer to that as well.
>> I have a simple question, sandy with the tribe of Oklahoma.
In your programs, are you also putting books with the families?
>> I'm sorry, what was the question?
>> Replacing books with families.
>> We're partnering, this is where we're partnering with reach out and read Washington so they're
partnering with the libraries and pediatricians to ensure that books get in the hands of families.
They feel like that's the one place where maybe you can hit a lot of people who wouldn't
walk into the libraries, they are going to bring their child to the doctor and that's
for them, a safe place, a trusted place so it's an optimum place to do that.
>> In spell, our eight partner libraries, most of them are giving books at some point.
So it's really up to them but some of their sub grant funds are going to that.
And in Colorado, we do a unique program called one book four that's for Colorado where we
give a copy of the same book every year to every four year old in Colorado.
75,000 of them and English and Spanish.
Three public libraries and reach out and read clinics so we just finished up our 4th year
and it's for two weeks every April.
Again, that one is privately funded.
We work with lieutenant governor's office every year to raise the funds for that and
we know, we have heard from parents that sometimes this is the first book that four year old
owns.
>> We also at state library a number of years ago, used some funds from a Paul Allen grant
and we have a lot of billionaires but a very generous grant and we're able to find books
that were published by a tribal printing press with tribal stories and get it out to the
many tribes in the state of Washington and there's a wonderful program.
>> A number of our libraries, we don't have something where everybody gets a book.
We want them to come in.
We want to go to where they are.
Most people don't say, let's go to houses and worship and food pantries but we go to
places where families don't have a lot are.
We will get a very good used donated books and we'll have extra books we get and we also
work with parent child home program which is a home based early literacy where they
bring a book and one week they bring a toy.
We have been doing it at middle country now for probably 20 years.
>> So this is Tim from IMLS, you all mentioned at various points, the importance of partnerships
and I'm wondering if we could be more specific on the types of partnerships you see as having
the greatest impact or highest value for libraries at a national level that aren't currently
in place.
>> Well, Tim, not necessarily the national but your state level, the build project that's
currently going on, this is a project where there's five pilot states where they're trying
to align museums and librarians with the early learning system, the formal learning system
in the state and my state is one of them in Michigan.
We have found that it's small baby steps.
I'm not saying overnight this is going to be, this full blown partnership but we are
seeing through this collective impact and working with them, an integrating into them
that there's real potential for that type of partnership to have large scale impact
with a state.
>> And I'm from Washington, we're another build pilot state.
My all aboard project, I'm seeing as a potential national model.
We just had one meeting but we're working with other entities that are involved in early
learning and discovering what we do that unique and what we can do that's duplicated to avoid
that and we're involving museum members.
We're starting small.
We're starting in including libraries and it's very grass roots.
I can see where that's going to grow within the state of Washington because it's kind
of like a built in frame work to make it happen.
You have the players and you know who they are.
One thing I'll note when working with other entities from outside libraries, it's kind
of like dating.
People in education are like, the men are from mars and women are from Venus.
We talk different languages and they may say, that's totally wrong and we're adding the
museum into the mix.
That's been a challenge but especially in the stage where we have reduced budgets and
staffing, if we're doing the same thing, it's really a waste of money but if we pool our
resources and know what we're doing, each of us is doing, we might have a very compelling
product we can offer to families.
>> There's family engagement networks out nationally that also could be potential for
us and that's parents involved in that and educators and I know that head start has a
huge family engagement and the U.S. Department of Education now is placing emphasis as they're
doing the race to the top challenges and states to include a family engagement piece.
So I think that's a potential for us as well.
>> I would mention again, reach out and read and there's family partnership and other healthcare
agencies.
Our spell research showed that low income parents often turn to medical professionals
for parents, information and advice.
They're natural partners.
We do a number of things with reach out and read both on the state level and we also try
to help facilitate partnerships between local libraries and their local healthcare clinics
so we're so delighted when reach out and read got the IMLS grant this we're looking forward
to working with them even more.
And also, museums are a great source and really any organization like WIC office.
How about PBS?
National geographic.
I mean, there's so many organizations to reach out to.
I think it's pretty vast and exciting.
>> I think you said just about everything.
You mentioned all of the major ones that I was going to mention but also, when we work
with libraries from various states we have them go back and say, what is in your state.
For instance, in Kansas, some of the libraries that were family placed libraries got funding
from what was then called smart start which is now called building blocks in Kansas but
they actually approached the libraries and said we want you to do this.
We want to work with you.
So when you have other agencies that are that big, you know, statewide reaching out and
saying, we want to do this, it was southwest and northwest smart start Kansas and so there's
PPP and the first five in California.
So we need to go back and see, what is in your particular state and how does it work
and then build the relationships with those agencies O.
>> I'll say the state of Washington, we have a department of early learning which is a
governor's level cabinet agency and they received a race to the top early learning challenge
grant a few years ago and the state library sent them a nice letter from the secretary
of state, we're thrilled you got this award, very nice.
And Dr. Betty hide who is the director of the department of early learning invited us
over and we did a chitchat and by the end of the meeting, she asked if we would like
money to promote the early learning development guidelines and we said sure.
So we worked to develop many grants that libraries could apply for and they created posters.
They took in free copies of the guidelines that they could distribute to parents.
It was the beginning of a relationship.
Again, it was like dating and we wrote had proposal to they could give us money and the
language thing, it was like nine months, like a really long pregnancy.
It was wonderful and it started that relationship building and I think one thing we noticed
and I continued to notice is that libraries are very invisible to a lot of people.
People in education, they don't think of us.
They say, oh, well, bring some books to a feed event, a summertime event and we'll give
them out or open up the school libraries and they forget about the public libraries.
It's like, we're there and we're doing summer reading so we're meeting with the people involved
in the office of superintendent, public instruction that say, hey, we can partner together.
You your food program, we have the reading program and why don't we do something.
So thing we can do to promote it and it can help raise our visibility and respect for
us.
I think, people don't think of us.
The other thing we're doing too in Washington is there's a move to have librarians certified
as merit trainers so we can offer training today care providers who need to receive a
certain number of stars, credits per year so they can improve their ranking.
So that's very formalized but it's great because we're having librarians getting the training.
They're getting more visible.
Day care providers, early learning people in the community are saying, I can get free
training instead of paying $30, $50 an hour for my stars credit.
And that and infiltrating early learning conferences.
I would say, get out there and get to know people and let people know you.
>> I also think it's important that we get articles on the impact that public libraries
have published in education journals because they all look to those journals oftentimes
for ideas and that would give us great exposure and we oftentimes don't do that.
So I think we're >> Have one more question.
>> We have one more?
>> This is Sarah Fuller from twitter.
Rachel wanted to know as educational policy moves to universal pre K, what do you think
the role of library should be in that conversation?
>> I would say in Washington, we're positioning ourselves, we're trying to help that transitional
role and look at the assessment tool that's used by the educational folks and see what
can we do in libraries that will help support developing those skills and help parents help
the kids develop those skills so again, partnering.
What can we do inline with an established standard.
>> What she said.
>> Any other questions?
>> Well, great!
Please join me in thanking our panel today.