School District 51 (SD51) has been working alongside multiple organizations to create the District Literacy Plan for the region.
Sheila Dobie, who works for the Columbia Basin Alliance for Literacy (CBAL), gave a presentation about this year endeavours at a school board meeting on June 12.
“I’m very excited about this current plan for a number of reasons,” she said. “We’ve used goals around community awareness, evaluation, and planning and programming. It’s integrated a lot of great partners that include Boundary Family Services, Interior Health, the school district, the libraries, individual citizens, cities, Sunshine Valley Living Society – a whole array of folks who have a commitment to life-long learning.”
The District Literacy Plan began in 2008 as a process to engage the community with literacy and learning.
“Next year, one of the main priorities is to continue with what we are doing, do a couple of new things but also spend the year getting the community ready to actually pull together a new planning process,” Dobie added. “We’re going to have a full day that will be facilitated where we invite the community together and to create a plan.”
Dobie noted that the Literacy Advisory Committee will be deciding whether to keep previous projects that have worked or to start with something new.
The community meeting will occur sometime in February.
“We are also going to be doing a health literacy event that’s going to be a partnership with Interior Health,” she said. “We’re hoping to make that a fairly round participant kind of activity.”
The Boundary Early Years Committee will also be working with the Literacy Advisory Committee on a Screen Smart program, which teaches families about screen time (such as computers and television) and engaging in physical activity.
Dobie pointed out that for CBAL, their programs included the Community Learning Place, which is the adult literacy drop-in every Tuesday at library, a special program for homeschoolers, and regular programming at the library such as Alphabet Soup, Mother Goose, and regular adult programs (the one-to-one learning that will get matched to tutors).
There is also the Christmas Books Under Every Tree and the Books For Babies, which is a book given to every baby when they’re born and is connected with Interior Health.
“We do a fair amount of work with people with special needs,” Dobie said, adding that CBAL will be focusing on more collaboration for next year.
The District Literacy Plan is revised each year to determine whether there needs to be changes or not.
