BookNook Begins New Chapter for Detroit Students
ITDRC Tech Lends Support to Literacy Program
Reading, writing, mathematics, and science are the pillars of elementary education, every young person starts with these foundational skills. Nowadays, a student’s backpack has one item needed for all their classes, a laptop.
For educators as well, access to recent curriculum lives online. Schools and afterschool programs without technology face the growing challenge of keeping their students engaged with limited resources.
“A problem we see is most of our kids don’t have technology at home,” says Education Director of Central Detroit Christian, Stephanie Avery.
Avery is head of a new addition at the CDC, an afterschool program that she says engages the student’s five senses and is empathetic to those who are falling behind.
Central Detroit Christian is a community driven nonprofit with a mission to create positive opportunities for the children in and around Detroit proper.
However, in order to keep making a community impact with upper elementary students who are reading on a lower level, the CDC needed more tablets and laptops.
ITDRC learned of their literacy program in 2020 after receiving a request for equipment in order to expand a program called BookNook. ITDRC has dedicated time and equipment to schools, libraries, and afterschool programs through projectConnect, in an effort to keep students from falling behind during the pandemic.
In 2019, the early days of the BookNook at the CDC, the program was in pilot mode, with 30 students testing out the features. After seeing great results the CDC began the process of scaling up the number of students who could participate in the program.
As the CDC ironed out plans to grow their after school outreach, the pandemic brought many obstacles to the surface for the community center.
Lack of connectivity was a conversation being had all over the country in 2020 as the pandemic kept citizens away from their local resources. Schools were adjusting to online learning while also looking for resources for students who did not have access to tech at home. Similar divides were seen in Detroit.
According to CDC Executive Director, Fikre Prince, Detroit schools have historically lagged behind the times when it comes to access to technology. In his community, the pandemic exacerbated this issue, and revealed an additional problem: students had limited or no access to technology at home.
“We knew that many homes in our neighborhood did not have the best computers, but we did not realize there would be an infrastructure issue to access the internet for most of them,” Prince explains.
Prince believes access to robust internet is still a problem for most in the Detroit neighborhood, no matter what their economic background may be.
“Without the help of ITDRC, our youth programming would have stopped…You gave us the flexibility to move outdoors with programming, which kept everyone safe and we could still move the mission forward,” Prince says.
With enough equipment to launch BookNook full scale, the CDC was ready to catch their kids up and also give them something to look forward to, using their imaginations and technology during a confusing time for young people.
The BookNook program helps them concentrate on the material instead of the fact that they are reading below level. So, instead of telling students they are reading a book on a first grade level the program labels it as level A, B, or C and so on. This helps to prevent bullying and keeps the student from getting discouraged.
Students are able to focus on their goal of achieving this level and rising to the next. A structure kids are familiar with, the desire to reach the next level mimics levels similar to a video game.
“The donated technology has given our kids something hands-on and a program is personalized for each individual student,” explains Avery.
While the CDC does offer a library and still holds a read aloud time, their selection was limited. With the new tech based learning program students have a large selection of books to choose from, with BookNook featuring over 400 reads.
The CDC is now seeing the fruits of their labor since the program has launched, kids who were previously struggling with literacy are engaging with material and feeling encouraged to continue because of the program’s rewards, levels, achievements, and badges.
“Year round we work with children to provide an atmosphere of support, social, and emotional learning environment” explains Avery, “With literacy we are incorporating technology in the learning process and because of the technology, we’ve found a higher interest level and that more children are engaged with the learning process…and that’s increased their reading skills.”
Since the new tablets arrived the program has grown from 30 students to around hundred students.
