Posts filed under 'DCI'
Last Friday, RIF celebrated reading with an extra special twist during the second distribution of the school year for D.C. Initiative, the Washington, D.C. RIF program that serves more than 16,000 children with more than 50,000 free books each year.
You may remember that the D.C. Initiative kicked off in November with an event at Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School in Southeast D.C. Students participated in a cultural exchange via Skype with students from the RIF program at William Tyson Elementary School in Anchorage, Ala., in observance of National American Indian and Alaska Native Heritage Month. Fast forward to February 19 when the King and Tyson students reconnected via Skype to celebrate Black History Month!
Fifth-grade students from King Elementary performed a “doo-wop”-filled interpretive reading of the children’s book, Jazz on a Saturday Night by Leo and Diane Dillon. The students also discussed the roots of jazz in African American culture, along with a lively Q & A session about Washington, D.C. Second and third-grade students from Tyson Elementary eagerly raised their hands for a chance to ask the King students questions. They most wanted to know: Have you ever been to the White House? What was the most exciting thing you saw there? Is it fun to live in D.C.? What are the most fun things to do?
The event continued to heat up with excitement when legendary D.C. musician Chuck Brown, also known as the Godfather of Go-Go, made a special guest appearance. Brown performed for the students and shared his personal affection for music and reading. The students clapped, snapped, and swayed with joy as Brown played a few of his popular tunes customized with reading–themed lyrics. He shared with the students that go-go music, a genre he created in the 70s is a blend of syncopated Latin beats with elements of jazz and African rhythms. Brown told the students that reading was an important part of life. He exclaimed, “Music may have made me famous, but reading has made me successful!”
To commemorate the day, each student selected a new book to keep and received a copy of Jazz on a Saturday Night signed with a personal note of inspiration from Brown.
Without a doubt, lasting impressions and connections were made on this jazzy day! Stay tuned for our next D.C. Initiative event on May 10, 2010 when we celebrate Asian Pacific American Heritage Month!
Happy Reading!
Ernestine Walls Benedict
VP, Marketing and Communications
Washington Post coverage February 25, 2010.
February 25th, 2010
Each month at the All-Staff meeting, RIF honors our employees for gold star customer service as well as makes awards quarterly for the embodiment of our founders’ passion for improving the language and literacy skills of young children. This week awards were presented for the month of February as well as the quarter 2 McNamara Award a month early due to the unique nominations we received.
The Gold Star of Customer Service was presented for the month of February to Lisa Estrin who recently moved into a new role as Special Initiatives Coordinator. In that position Lisa had to hit the ground running as two projects were at critical junctures: RIF Ambassadors and Volunteer of the Year Awards (VOYA). She jumped in and got to work immediately ensuring that these important volunteer engagement efforts continued seamlessly. On top of that she has overseen a process that drew a record number of VOYA nominations! Thank you, Lisa!
I mentioned in the opening paragraph “unique nominations” received for the quarterly McNamara Award for quarter 2. Normally our nominations come from internal staff; however, during the recent VOYA nominating period a DC RIF coordinator at an elementary school nominated two RIF employees as Community Volunteers of the Year for the national competition! Quite frankly we had never anticipated such nominations but knew immediately we could not truthfully consider internal candidates for VOYA. However, the senior managers at RIF felt these employees deserved a special award for the recognition this coordinator gave them. Congratulations to Henry Crawford and Kathryn Jackson!
Henry Crawford according to the coordinator’s nominating statement “has volunteered in more than one school in which I have served as the school librarian. He is always willing to read stories. I admire his commitment to children. He is always willing to assist with the learning activities with the students no matter what grade level…. he has chosen to come and enhance the reading of our children.” Great job, Henry!
The same coordinator wrote about Kathryn Jackson that she “has been a devoted RIF volunteer. She is very creative in setting up the RIF day distribution activities. She is always willing to go beyond what is required to make a successful distribution day. I admire her efforts when she engages every single student in total participation for the reading activities. She clearly enjoys promoting reading.” Go, Kathryn!
I am sorry Kathryn was out of the office and unable to join Lisa, Henry and me as we donned special reading hats and enjoyed a celebratory story!
Happy Reading!
Carol
Twitter: @RascofromRIF
February 24th, 2010
1. It was a great week for the RIF DC Initiative with more and more photos now appearing in the office of happy faces holding new, free books and totem poles of renown! Congratulations to the DCI Committee at RIF and all the staff for the hours spent carrying out RIF’s mission in the most direct way with children. And thank you to the many outside RIF who volunteered, contributed and reported!
2. A shout out to our national partners Kappa Kappa Gamma for your support of the DCI day through volunteers; and a big thank you to RIF Board member Carolyn Simpson who serves as the Kappa National Philanthropy Chair for gathering a group of KKG Alumnae this week to discuss with RIF staff how KKG can be even more involved!
3. As November’s days continue to roll by us, National American Indian and Alaska Native Heritage Month also continues to be on RIF’s “radar” daily. The activities associated with DCI this week were as noted in a previous posting related to this special month of study and reflection. I have encouraged through Twitter and other avenues and now ask you, the Rasco from RIF readers, to be sure and start visiting regularly if you do not already do so, Debbie Reese’s blog American Indians in Children’s Literature…a lot of food for thought there. Next week’s WEDNESDAY WINDOW will be posing for all of us some questions about Thanksgiving; in brief, have we really studied the American Indian perspective as we should for this holiday?
4. The Miami Book Fair International is into the weekend street fair; RIF is there and if YOU are there, too, then be sure to look for RIF in the Children’s Alley where activities are awaiting children and families. Lots of fun to be shared! For those of us not there, we can take a look at RIF’s Reading Garden to share some of the same “flavor” and activities!
5. I have BACK HOME by Julia Keller sitting here to start reading next…and I’ve already sneaked a peak at 15 pages; can’t wait to finish this posting as the next pages are calling me!
5. And a good book I read to close out the week? Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls. When I read, no when I rapidly absorbed Walls’ The Glass Castle, her story of being raised in poverty by parents who confounded me as a children’s and family policymaker/advocate, I had such a strong desire to further probe the women in Jeannette’s life, particularly her mother and her grandmother. Half Broke Horses is the “true life novel” Walls has gifted us telling the story of her maternal grandmother, Lily Casey Smith. Walls speaks in her grandmother’s voice and helps those of us who asked - upon finishing The Glass Castle – the perplexing question in one way or another as stated by Liesl Schillinger in The New York Times Book Review: How did such untamed characters come to exist in America, in the not-so-distant 1960’s and ’70’s?
Lily’s story is not that different from the lives many of my generation’s grandparents lived, and I know in addition to more deeply understanding Jeannette’s mother (Lily’s daughter) through this story, I also learned more about the world from which my own wonderful and strong grandmother came, one about which she spoke often. Hardships seen as adventures, teachers of 15 years of age in one-room classrooms, young children of 11 becoming the ranch manager so to speak hiring and managing farm hands as Lily’s own mother working “very hard at being a lady” and not capable of helping her husband with hard labor tasks. Lily’s formal education through the achievement of eventually obtaining her official teaching credentials came in fits and starts, but her life education was a result of all her years of living.
…and we scrimped and saved, pinching every penny till old Abe Lincoln yelped.
We’d always been frugal…we never threw away anything. We saved bits of wood in case we needed shims. When
our old shirts finally frayed to pieces, we cut off the buttons and put them in the button box; the shirts we either used
as rags or gave them to a seamstress who turned them into patchwork quilts.
But now I came up with additional ways to save money. We made the children chairs out of orange crates. Rosemary
drew on used paper bags-both sides-and painted on old boards. We drank from coffee cans with wire tied around
them for handles. Whenever possible, I drove behind trucks so their slipstream pulled me along and I saved on gas.
Happy reading,
Carol
WEEK’S END closes the work week with some thoughts, comments, feelings about some book and/or event recently experienced. If a book, it may be a children’s book or an adult book or both. If an event, it may be literacy-related or not. But it comes at week’s end.
Twitter: @RascofromRIF
November 14th, 2009
Slapshot, The Washington Capitals Mascot; First Grade Student, King Elementary School; Brendan Morrison, Washington Capitals Player
Greetings, it’s Ernestine Walls Benedict, Vice President of Marketing and Communications at RIF. I’ve got some exciting news to share with you! On Nov 10, RIF kicked off the third year of its DC Initiative, the Washington DC RIF program that serves more than 16,000 children by distributing over 50,000 free books to them each year. RIF staff from the national office joined with local volunteers to organize and participate in reading celebrations throughout the city.
An extra special kickoff event was held at Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School in Southeast DC. First grade students at King Elementary participated in a cultural exchange via Skype with fifth grade students from the RIF Program at William Tyson Elementary School in Anchorage, Alaska. In observance of National American Indian and Alaska Native Heritage Month, the students from Tyson Elementary performed an action-filled interpretation of the children’s book, Totem Tale: A Tall Story From Alaska by Deb Vanasse and Erik Brook. The students also discussed Native Alaskan culture along with a lively Q & A session. King first graders confidently belted out their names and asked Tyson 5th graders a host of fun questions, “Does it ever get hot in Alaska? Do you have real totem poles in your town? Have you ever seen an eagle or a polar bear?” The students from Tyson enthusiastically answered each question and provided fun facts about Alaska.
The fun didn’t stop there! Washington Capitals player Brendan Morrison joined the celebration and talked with the students about his love for reading and hockey. All the students beamed with joy when mascot Slapshot made a surprise guest appearance. To commemorate the day, the students received cool Washington Capitals magnets, autographed photos of Brendan in action on the ice AND most important of all, they got books!! Each student selected a new book to keep and also received a copy of Totem Tale: A Tall Story from Alaska. It was inspiring to see how the children connected with each other over Skype – opening new doors of communication and learning experiences that will hopefully stay with them for a lifetime. It was a Capital Day indeed!
Stay tuned for our next DC Initiative event on February 9, 2010 when King fifth graders will conduct a cultural exchange with Tyson first graders in celebration of Black History Month!
Happy Reading!
Ernestine
P. S. from Rasco: See what a great job Ernestine did on FOX5 News on Tuesday talking about RIF and children’s literacy! And here is a three-minute interview by The Washington Examiner.
Wednesday Window features books and/or information which illustrate the “Windows” portion of the paper “Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors.”
November 11th, 2009
Cassie, Lisa and Annie prepare to share DCI distribution details with RIF staff.
As many of you know from previous postings about the DCI (District of Columbia Initiative), RIF’s national office gave to the children of the DC public schools the gift of RIF staff time for direct oversight in planning and implementation of the Books for Ownership program as part of our 40th birthday celebration a few years ago. As we transitioned from the wonderful group of individuals who were retiring from the oversight of RIF in the DC public schools since day one, it was determined we would use this opportunity as a laboratory for training and innovation incubation! A mouthful meaning we look for new ideas to try as we serve the children of the nation’s capital city and then share those tested ideas with RIF programs throughout the nation .
RIF is preparing for this year’s distributions in DC with each one to be held in a month that is a traditional special heritage month. The first distribution will be held in November and celebrate National American Indian and Alaska Native Heritage Month. Last week the activities committee shared with the staff some background information, a book TotemTales which will be featured and some of the craft activities to be carried out with students.
Stay tuned and watch for an exciting report from one school where we will be facilitating a cultural exchange among RIF students from very different parts of the country!
Happy reading!
Carol
Twitter: @RascofromRIF
October 27th, 2009
(From left to right.) Kimball Elementary Students and "Screech the Eagle" at the DCI event. Students listen to a read-aloud from Carol Rasco and Manny Acta (Nationals Manager).
I’m all smiles as I type this follow-up post to yesterday’s Muse Brief highlighting RIF Day. The morning started off with RIF staff fanning out across the city to their assigned D.C. public school to help other volunteers distribute more than 13,000 books to 44 schools throughout the District. Following the Discover D.C.!-themed book distributions, each location hosted motivational activities based on famous sites in the city.
Through a partnership with the Washington Nationals, we held a special celebration at the team’s adopted school, Kimball Elementary. Nats’ Manager Manny Acta read Clifford Goes to Washington to 45 2nd-graders and autographed pictures. Nationals’ mascot Screech surprised the Kimball students with his signature moves and even helped them with a motivational activity, coloring a portrait of himself. We are very proud to have the Nationals as a partner to help students throughout the District discover the excitement that reading can bring to their life. Check out today’s Washington Post “Metro” section featuring a photo of Acta reading aloud to Kimball students!
The excitement continued with “RIF Night” at the Nationals-Pittsburgh Pirates game. As part of the festivities, nine students from Kimball Elementary Cheetah’s baseball team were honored in a pre-game ceremony on the field. RIF also hosted a community kiosk at the game, where RIF officials provided attendees with RIF information and giveaways. And I eagerly howled the official game opener to the fans, “Washington Nationals, let’s play ball!”
What a RIF Day and Night, indeed! Happy Reading!
Carol
May 20th, 2009
