The numerous initiatives announced in the Bridging the Word Gap event at the White House on Thursday included:
- The $300,000 Bridging the Word Gap Incentive Prize, a challenge to develop “low-cost, scalable, technology-based interventions that drive parents and caregivers to engage in more back-and-forth interactions with their young children.”
- The Bridging the Word Gap Research Network, a project with two years of funding to help develop a national research agenda for bridging the word gap.
- Support for a new efforts in the 20 Race to the Top-Early Learning Challenge states to address the word gap.
- The Word Gap Toolkit, a set of enrichment and early language development resources for caregivers and teachers.
- Parent-friendly, “one-stop shop” resources for finding high-quality learning programs.
- Specific resources to support the particular needs of young English learners (ELL) and dual-language learners (DLL).
In all my interviews for this piece, I heard a lot of broad language about planning for America’s future workforce, growing the global economy, and investing in our children. “Bridging the word gap is not just an educational imperative, it’s an economic imperative,” said Maura Pally, executive director of the office of Hillary Clinton at the Clinton Foundation, and this is indeed how we need to be thinking if we are going to prepare kids for the future.
But yesterday, I was not thinking in broad language. I was thinking about the very specific language of my low-income students. Our writing assignment was, in my mind, fairly straightforward, based on a practical exercise I called “My Dream Job.” Usually, my students grumble and groan about my writing assignments, then reluctantly and sulkily write three or four sentences, just to get the writing over with. This time, however, they got down to work without argument. Twenty minutes later, they were still writing. I walked around the room to check in; I was dying to know what these kids imagined for themselves. Some wanted to be professional athletes, others yearned to be musicians; one described her life as a doctor. One student, however, claimed he could not complete the assignment, because, he said, “I don’t have a dream job.” I pushed him a little bit, and even suggested he take it on as a fictional narrative—to imagine himself out in the world, in another life, where he could do anything, be anything he wanted, no limits.
In the end, he couldn’t even give himself the benefit of a fiction. He begged off the assignment, claiming, “Well, I could dream, but what’s the point? I know none of that stuff will ever happen.”
I’m glad the White House was full of optimistic people thinking in broad strokes and grand visions this morning, because kids like this need them to be.
Article Appeared @http://blackstarjournal.org/?p=4453