Education

FOSTERING CREATIVITY AND CONFIDENCE

Read and Write Kalamazoo (RAWK) was born of the need for students to have places outside of school to foster their growth as writers and to nurture confidence in their own minds — places that provide positive adult interaction and supportive community engagement from as soon as students are reading and writing, and throughout their time in school. The importance of supplying these supports is plain: not only is literacy essential for success in school and in the workplace, but it also reinforces communication skills and the capacity for healthy lives and relationships. RAWK offers opportunities for building these fundamentals and a means for the larger community to support students in their growth.

RAWK endeavors to foster a culture of literacy with students and their families, and creates an opportunity for local colleges and the greater community to contribute to the success of each student through volunteer commitments and events. RAWK maintains a warm and creative environment, a safe space in which students may express themselves, develop positive relationships with people of all ages, and build self-esteem. Poetry, journalism, fiction, reader’s theater workshops, and classes culminate in publications and live readings, which the students present to the public. Through projectbased learning, small groups, and a low adult-to-student ratio, RAWK offers students an environment free from the pressures of the school setting in which to develop and own their minds and voices.

www.readandwritekzoo.org

“We believe that literacy for one means change for all.” The Kalamazoo Literacy Council is a nonprofit volunteer tutor organization dedicated to enhancing the lives of illiterate adults through free one-on-one programs designed to develop reading, writing and spelling skills. Through the council’s efforts we hope to also educate the public about the crisis of illiteracy and bring together a community with a common goal of making Kalamazoo County 100 percent literate. For 40 years the KLC has recruited, trained and equipped volunteers to tutor adults in need of literacy services. Currently, the KLC has 186 active tutors assisting 265 adults in need of literacy education. It has established 10 Community Literacy Centers that provide quality adult literacy services at the neighborhood level. It has built a functional community-wide collaborative whose collective work has positive impacts on a local, regional and state level. The agencies of the Adult Literacy Collaborative of Kalamazoo County led by the KLC are serving more than 1,700 adult learners who are reading below the 6th grade level. The KLC is now the preeminent messenger and advocate for adult literacy in Kalamazoo County. In Kalamazoo County, over 25,000 people or 13% of adults cannot read a simple story to a child, an intersection on a map, a prescription label, or total purchases from an order form. They struggle daily to take part in the world around them and fail to reach their full potential as parents, community members, and employees because they lack basic reading skills. To make some demonstrable progress in this area, the KLC and its collaborating organizations have set a goal of collectively reaching no less than 20% annually (approximately 5,000) within three years, with increasing numbers served each year beyond. To achieve this, the KLC launched the ENT-R (Everyone Needs to Read) Adult Literacy Initiative in January 2011 to mobilize new and existing community assets to build a comprehensive system that provides literacy education to adults in the county and strengthens and sustains the administrative and programmatic infrastructure that provides these services.

www.kalamazooliteracy.org

The Archives and Regional History Collections at Western Michigan University have the responsibility and honor of housing historical documents from across the region and state, as well as providing an accessible location that allows for research and learning. A new building is under construction on Oakland Drive that will bring together all of the regional history and archives collections. The Charles C. and Lynn L. Zhang Legacy Collections Center (Center) will offer an environment conducive to discovering the past while welcoming the greater community to research and learn.

The state-of-the-art building will not only feature spacesaving storage technology that will make all documents easy to access, but also provide climate controls to preserve the condition of those items. The building is aiming for LEED Certification through the use of sustainable materials and efficient heating, cooling, and electrical operations. The Center will preserve the documents of the past and allow for the continual growth of the collections by providing a place for the community, and future generations, to celebrate history.

The Center, set for completion in the fall of 2013, is not just an educational asset, it is also a community resource. In 1962 the University Archives and Regional History Collections were designated as a repository for regional history by the Michigan Historical Commission. The collection contains documents from 12 southwest Michigan counties including court documents, civil records, photographs, maps, and more. Holdings include the archives for the Kalamazoo Gazette, letters from the Civil War, and the French-Michilimackinac Research and Translation Project. Free and open to the public, the Center will serve as an accessible resource for the entire southwest Michigan community. From K-12 students working on school assignments, to youth engaged in projects for their after-school programs, to college students conducting research for history theses, to adults exploring family histories, the Center will be open to all.

www.wmich.edu/library/collections/archives

The Kalamazoo Arts Integration Initiative (KAII), begun in 2003, has focused on forming partnerships with teachers and artists in the Kalamazoo Public Schools in order to create meaningful arts-integrated curriculum. During its first 10 years, KAII has worked to build community by further developing and nurturing partnerships with local community groups, businesses, cultural organizations, institutions of higher education and parents to enhance understanding, resources and support for arts education.

KAII provides educational opportunities for classroom teachers and students to use the arts as a vehicle for learning. In turn these opportunities encourage imagination and, therefore, creativity in the classroom. As education expert and MacArthur Fellow Robert Root-Bernstein has written, “Learning to think creatively in one discipline opens the door to understanding creative thinking in all disciplines. Educating this universal creative imagination is the key to producing lifelong learners capable of shaping the innovations of tomorrow.” (Preface, Sparks of Genius: The Thirteen Thinking Tools of the World’s Most Creative People 1999).

KAII’s learning opportunities come in myriad ways. For example, Northglade Montessori Magnet School elementary students are learning, studying and understanding science curriculum — specifically, animal habitats, weather, life cycles and water cycles — by making connections with art and nature. Through KAII they are engaged in meaningful learning experiences where they are active participants in their education. In this unit students are listening and dancing to Vivaldi’s, The Four Seasons; creating weather events through music and dance improvisation; creating original music and movement to children’s literature (The Hungry Caterpillar, for example); creating an original book with student photography, printing, creative writing, papermaking and binding; and creating an original song about habitats with local songwriter, Steve Barber.

In the after-school Declaration Tree and Hope Quilt projects, students have used literacy strategies to brainstorm, describe, design and fashion collaborative works of visual art and creative writing for installations and permanent displays throughout the community. These projects build supportive bridges providing young artists from lowincome homes an opportunity to participate in a public reception and exhibit. Students are engaged in a positive and enriching art experience where they share ideas with each other and members of the community, being embraced by a community that has involved them in all stages of the project — design, creation, discussion and exhibition.

As a cross-curricular, multi-disciplinary, integrated approach to education, KAII offers much more than traditional curriculum alone. Indeed, through creative, self-expressive, multi-cultural experiences, KAII fosters increased academic achievement, healthy social and emotional development, and an enriched quality of life.