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Parents and Students Learn Side by Side in D.C. School

Adult educator Madge Gonzalez helps Mary Mack, a participant in the Toyota Family Literacy Program at Moten at Wilkinson Elementary School in Washington, look up the school system’s grade-level expectations for reading.

—Stephen Voss for Education Week

A 20-Year-Old Initiative Launched by a Carmaker Stresses Family Literacy

By Mary Ann Zehr

Washington

Sharica A. Bond says she spends a lot of time at her son Damairee’s school in part because of his urging. The 4-year-old is excited when she visits his classroom, and he tells her at home, “You have to go back to school.”

Damairee’s school, Moten at Wilkinson Elementary School, located just east of the Anacostia River in the nation’s capital, makes it convenient for parents to be a regular daily presence. The school hosts a family-literacy program that places parents for a couple of hours each week in classrooms, learning side by side with their children. The program also offers separate parenting classes and preparation to earn a General Educational Development certificate for several hours each day.

The 6-year-old literacy program at Moten is one of 93 in 30 different cities across the country underwritten by the Toyota Motor Corp., so it’s free to the school and the participating parents or grandparents. The Toyota Family Literacy Program began 20 years ago with parents of preschoolers, and it has developed into a K-3 model. It aims to address the needs of the estimated 30 million adults in the United States who have basic or below-basic literacy skills and are caretakers of children from birth to age 8, says Sharon Darling, the founder and president of the National Center for Family Literacy . The center, based in Louisville, Ky., manages...