NEW ORLEANS (press release) – The Campaign for Grade-Level Reading announced today that the Kay Fennelly Summer Literacy Institute is being recognized with Pacesetter Honors and as winner of the Bright Spot Award for its work in 2019.
The Kay Fennelly Summer Literacy Institute is a collaborative initiative between the New Orleans Campaign for Grade-Level Reading, United Way of Southeast Louisiana, and KID smART. For the last two summers, KID smART has provided literacy integration workshops and coaching to over 25 summer camps throughout the city with the goal of embedding literacy strategies and combat summer slide. This work has won two different accolades from the National Grade-Level Reading Campaign – winner of the Bright Spot Award and finalist for the Pacesetter Award!
Congratulations to our phenomenal team on this work: KID smART board member Angela Herbert White, Arts Coaches Samantha King and Zeb Hollins III, and former coach Aminisha Ferdinand.
“We applaud the civic leaders and local funders whose time, talent, energy and imagination have fueled progress in these Pacesetter Communities. Mobilized communities — like these Pacesetters — support our big bet on the problem-solving potential of proximity.”
-Ralph Smith, managing director of CGLR.
“We actually went to those trainings and brought everything we learned directly back to our program and was able to see all of the fruits of our labor because the kids loved it and they didn’t even realize they were doing literacy.”
-Summer Camp Director, 2019
“I think one of the biggest things that I personally learned- I think that when we think about literacy, we think about reading. We just automatically think about reading. And the Kay Fennelly and KID smART coaches taught us how to think about it in many different ways… So we were able to learn about all of these different parts of what literacy is and able to incorporate it into our [non-academic camp mission].”
-Summer Camp Director, 2020
