Children in our service area are not prepared for Kindergarten. Seventy percent need remediation, some significantly. While CML has spent considerable effort throughout the past years to reach families and provide a curriculum to prepare their children to start school prepared (our Ready to Read Corps, for example), we were missing an essential piece. Until families fully appreciated exactly what constitutes “Kindergarten,” we were preparing them for a mere abstraction. What, exactly, does a Kindergarten look like, feel like; what happens in a Kindergarten and what am I preparing my child for? The additional urgency of providing this service is driven by the state of Ohio’s newly enacted law known as the Third Grade Reading Guarantee. This law requires third graders to pass a state reading assessment before being promoted to fourth grade. The implications of this law are dramatic. This fall, the first occurrence of the test, sixty-five percent of students in Columbus City Schools failed. Thus, without creative, all-hands-on-deck, high-impact solutions, we are headed for a disaster. We can’t wait until kids are in third grade to help them. Second grade is even too late. The groundwork for success begins before the first day of Kindergarten, and the Ready for Kindergarten space strives to build that groundwork through hands-on, experiential learning.

Significantly, we were committed to authenticity – recreating exactly as much as possible a real classroom. We visited several actual Kindergartens, interviewed teachers and principals and asked them to vet our decisions and choices. For our pilot we identified a very busy branch with an at-risk population – and also a can-do staff attitude. We carved up a healthy square footage of the current children’s area to dedicate to a Ready for Kindergarten area and built a low-cost space with Kindergarten-appropriate elements. Most surprising to us is that all our city school Kindergartens have whiteboards, so we purchased the same model and included the same applications and trained our staff in their usage. And where does the Kindergarten experience start for most kids? Not in the classroom at school, but on board the school bus. Our talented Maintenance staff designed and built a school bus – complete with lights and wheels – and the experience of riding the bus has become a magnet that draws kids to the area. Most importantly, as we are out in the community and the branch proactively talking about getting children Ready to Read and Ready for Kindergarten, we connect those families with this area in the branch. There they meet a staff person who engages the families in the process and expectations of the Kindergarten experience, thus providing a much needed context for the messages and training we are giving.

The Ready for Kindergarten pilot quickly galvanized CML’s commitment to preparing kids for Kindergarten. This effort drove other ideas to fruition such as Reading Buddies – volunteers help kids practice reading skills – and Book Lessons – CML staff train parents in the fundamentals of teaching reading. Services which grew out of the activities in the Kindergarten area. Because of the potency of a physical space that represents our commitment, this idea of a Ready for Kindergarten area has been included in all 10 of our new buildings we are working on, and is already being accommodated into four current branches, with more to come. While we are still getting a handle on performance metrics, we have, to date, many lessons learned. First, the area needs a trained adult (either volunteer or staff) to direct the activity in the space. The area isn’t intended for unfocused play; it is directed learning, which requires a trained adult. Plus, much of the time, parents themselves don’t know how to use the educational manipulatives to best advantage. Thus the staff person models for parents the skills and use of tools necessary to get the most out of the experience. Secondly, we have identified the best early literacy manipulatives that have the greatest value whether simple – blocks and letters – or complex – SmartBoard apps. Finally, attendance and involvement by children and families continues to grow.