Quality education does not stop at the steps in front of a school.

In order to provide the absolute best

education for the Arlington Independent School Districts students, learning has to be viewed as a
pervasive attitude, a goal which the Arlington Public Library has been focused on attaining through the
help of the TLI (Texas Literacy Initiative) grant. Our partnership with AISD has allowed us to create
strong supporting programs to help reach beyond the classroom to continue educating students. These
programs would not exist for the citizens of Arlington without the support of the TLI grant, which means
that without the help of the grant, more than 4,000 students, parents, and teachers who have
participated in the programs during FY14 would never have had that opportunity.
But what are these programs? What are their goals? What impact do they have and how many people
have they served? The list of programs that have been funded by the TLI grant includes: Early Learning
Matters (formerly Lee y Seras), Life Through Literacy, AISD Library Visits, AISD Community-Based
Childcare Visits, Stories to our Children, and Reading Corps. Every one of these programs is focused on
promoting and continuing the education of AISD students outside of the classroom.
Early Learning Matters is a program designed to help parents with 0-4 year olds prepare their child for
school. The program seeks to empower parents as their childs first and most important teacher and role
model. Each one-hour session emphasizes the importance of developing early literacy skills. During the
session, simple methods that parents can use to develop these pre-literacy skills in their children are
demonstrated. In FY 2014, 324 adults and 337 children attended the program.
Life Through Literacy is a program designed to teach young parents and parents-to-be in AISD high
schools the importance of playing a role in their childs development. One of the main goals of the
program is to teach the young parents that they are the first and most important educator in their
childs life. The program works with the students in the Parenting Education Program (PEP) at Arlington,
Seguin, Sam Houston, Lamar, and Bowie high schools. A copy of Baby Basics, a tell-all pregnancy guide,
is given to the students, used during one-on-one PEP sessions, and helps the young parents keep up
with health aspects of their pregnancy. In addition, the program provides a new board book or picture
book for the parents to keep at each of the five sessions. These books often become the start of the
parents first library at home and become their babys first and favorite books. A total of 31 teens
attended these classes in FY 2014.
George W. Hawkes Central Library Visits allow Pre-K children from participating TLI & United Way AISD
campuses to come to the George W. Hawkes Central Library for a field trip to get a pleasant introduction
to the public library. The programming librarian works with the Family Engagement Liaisons, teachers
and librarians at the Pre-K locations to create an exciting experience geared specifically for their young
students. This program also helps get library cards into new families by sending home a My First Library
Card application (English/Spanish) with each child. In addition, the children are all sent home with a
goodie bag containing items like an age-appropriate book, an early learner journal, pencils and
bookplates, but also special early literacy information for their parents in English and Spanish. During FY
2014 32 AISD campuses participated in the tours, with an enormous 2,591 students and 455 parents and
teachers.

AISD Community-Based Childcare Visits serve both as an exciting event for the students and an
opportunity to provide convenient library services to the parents and teachers of the students in
attendance. The Arlington Public Library began an outreach program to area childcare centers in the
spring of 2014. The children are treated to a storytime session in their own classrooms on a monthly
basis. In addition to the storytime, the teachers and parents are provided with the opportunity to utilize
library services at a convenient location. They may sign up for library cards, check out or return
materials, and learn more about upcoming programs during each of the visits. A total of 16 campuses
host these visits from the library. The inaugural spring semester saw over 91 different sessions with an
average of 32 students in attendance at each session.
Stories to our Children encourages literacy and early learning awareness through the telling of stories.
Passing on stories from generation to generation is an important part of the human experience, one that
strengthens families and communities. In the Stories to Our Children program, parents attend a series of
one to five workshops in which they write, illustrate, and refine their own stories to their children. The
goal of the program is to support mothers and fathers as the first educators of their children while
helping them pass their familys history and traditions on to the next generation. At the end of the
program, the parents all receive a bound copy of their story and a book bin to give it a special place
among their childrens first books. The fall 2013 semester, the only one during FY2014, had a program
attendance of 141 adults and 89 children.
Reading Corps is a program in which children have the opportunity to work one-on-one with a volunteer
to help improve reading, writing, and literacy skills. Reading Corps takes place at a variety of locations
throughout the community, including library branches, schools, and community organizations like the
YWCA. The focus of the program is not a tutoring program instead, the goal is to instill a lifelong love
of reading and learning that will help students excel both in their school work and in their future lives by
modeling how fun and engaging reading and learning can be. During the spring and summer of 2014,
214 students were served by Reading Corps volunteers.
Every single one of these programs began with the help of the TLI grant and the Arlington Independent
School District. Without that source of funding and support, many programs which have served to
change attitudes about education would not have been available to citizens. The impact that the AISD
TLI partnership has on the Arlington Public Librarys literacy programming is enormous, and that, in turn,
allows the library to have an amazing impact on the students and parents being served by the Arlington
Independent School District.