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5.30.08 | In 13 rural and tribal Montana communities, children receive the lifelong gift of words.
In February of 2008, The Dennis and Phyllis Washington Foundation awarded a grant to Hopa Mountain, a Bozeman-based organization invested in rural and tribal citizen leaders who are working to improve education, ecological health, and economic development in their hometowns. Grant funding has been specifically allocated to the organization's StoryMakers program, which officially started its first cycle in October of 2007.
StoryMakers is a unique early learning initiative offering parents or primary caregivers of children ages 0-5 the proven tools to create a home environment that gives children the best chances for success in school. Since its inception, the program has been implemented in 13 communities throughout Montana and covers all seven of the state's American Indian reservations.
Early childhood education is a predominant focus of the Foundation. StoryMakers offers an approach unlike any other program in Montana for developing early language and literacy skills in the state's tribal and rural areas. The Foundation grant helped to support the publication costs of instructional pamphlets as well as the purchase of over 5,000 books. These books and materials are the program's tools, carefully selected to fulfill learning needs as well as for their fun and interactive qualities.
"What parents do at home can significantly impact the story of their children's lives," said Linda Clark, StoryMakers Director. "This is especially true in low-income communities. Everybody needs this information, but in areas not dominated by everyday middle-class families, this activity can have a huge impact just by changing a few of the patterns."
Every StoryMakers branch enjoys community ownership of the program. The local volunteer teams that work with parents range from sponsoring organizations to interested individuals. "The teams determine the structure of the program," said Clark, pointing out that each community is different so a singular approach doesn't necessarily work. "We just want to make sure it's parent focused."
Each local team is required to report on their interaction with parents and how they are distributing the materials. Local teams are also 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 weekly contact with her teams, Clark will travel across Montana to personally visit each StoryMaker community.
"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," said Clark.
StoryMakers also benefits from a network of partnerships through additional grants that will help measure outcomes. For example, StoryMakers receives funding from the Department of Education, which will conduct an independent evaluation of the program. In three communities, the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) – Part C serves as the program's sponsoring organization. IDEA – Part C focuses specifically on children aged 0-3 and the StoryMakers program is able to fill the IDEA requirements. "Our program is being integrated into what is already being done in some places," said Clark.
StoryMakers deliberately focuses on creating an environment that is conducive to fun interaction with adults in the home. Among certain minority groups, kids begin school several years behind. "We align ourselves with the best research," said Clark, "and the research overwhelmingly points to the importance of early childhood education. But our system is not currently set up to deal with that research. What we should be doing and what we are doing are not the same. To address those early years, we have to change the home environment."
Clark sees the universal potential of the program and her vision is to one day give every child born in the state a birth book with a note about the importance of learning in the early years. The organization is also working on efforts to improve the holdings of rural and tribal libraries so children in these areas will have an ongoing resource for reading. Clark 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."
