Marin teacher candidates to run literacy workshops for parents
Bilingual college students in a teacher credentialing program at Dominican University will run literacy workshops for parents at two Marin elementary schools in April.
The students, who attend Dominican University of California in San Rafael, will lead the free workshops to help parents embed the reading habit into their children’s lifestyles.
The workshops are April 4 at Lynwood Elementary School in Novato and April 17 at Coleman Elementary School in San Rafael. A workshop also will be held April 11 at Grant School in Richmond.
Financed by a grant from Marin Community Foundation, the sessions will be led by teacher candidates trained in how to run the workshops by staff at the Parent Services Project in San Rafael.
The 42-year-old Marin nonprofit runs the local version of a national effort, the Raising a Reader program. Raising a Reader involves a children’s book take-home and exchange program, said Kerry Bacho, early literacy manager for the Parent Services Project.
“One of the main goals is to create a habit of reading on a daily basis,” Bacho said. “And of course, there are all the benefits that go along with sharing a book aloud with a child.”
Bacho said she was approached last year by Austin-based Branch Alliance for Educator Diversity to help train the teacher candidates at Dominican on how to engage families with literacy. The training partnership went well and Dominican sought to repeat it this year.
“They loved what we did,” Bacho said. Dominican officials approached the Marin Community Foundation for a grant to help finance another year of the student teacher-parent workshops.
“We chose six bilingual teacher candidates from Dominican,” Bacho said.
“I have trained them on three separate occasions on how to develop a literacy-based workshop,” she added. “How to organize it, and how to present it in a very engaging way to parents and their children.”
On Thursday, Bacho attended a literacy play group at the Pickleweed Community Center in the Canal area of San Rafael. About 20 young children under the age of 5 and their caregivers attended, sitting in a circle to listen to Bacho talk about books and reading.
Later, they did literacy-related activities, such as making bookmarks or creating their own “me books,” as Bacho called them.
The “me books” were written booklets for children to draw pictures of themselves and their families and take home. Parents would then be able to read the child-illustrated books to the children — most of whom don’t yet read themselves — so they could become familiar with words and reading.
“I really love this program,” said Julia Lopez, who was at the play group with her daughter, Addison Musus, 3. “It’s really helped me a lot. I just wish it would be more often.”
Lopez said Addison has been attending since she was less than a year old, originally along with her older sister, Kylie Musus, now almost 6 and in kindergarten. Both girls have enjoyed interacting with new friends, Lopez said.
“She loves everything about it,” Lopez said of Addison. “She loves to share with the other kids, play and learn.”
Idolina Mazariegos was at the play group Thursday with her granddaughter, Crisler Alvarez, almost 2 years old.
Crisler has been “doing better in speaking and listening” since she started coming to the play group, Mazariegos said.
“She loves listening to music here and dancing,” Mazariegos said. Her granddaughter also learned how to color correctly at the play group.
“Before she was putting the crayons on her mouth,” she said. “Now she puts the crayons on paper.”