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The Buffalo News, 8/13/17 Program teaches Buffalo parents how to prepare kids for school
Three-year-old Alicia Wityee picked up an alphabet block from the back of a wooden toy truck and showed it to her mom.
“I?” she asked.
Her mother, Lalpan Mawii, took a peek.
“Look at it again,” she told her daughter.
“T,” Alicia said, barely audibly.
“Louder. I can’t hear you,” her mother gently coaxed.
“T!” the girl said clearly.
Alicia graduated this May from the Parent-Child Home Program, a nationwide program that teaches parents how to get their children ready for school. Twice a week for two years, mentors go to a family’s house and show the parents how to use children’s books and educational toys to engage their children in conversation and get them ready for preschool.
In Buffalo, where state tests showed only 16.4 percent of children grades 3 through 8 were proficient in English Language Arts last year, two local groups run Parent-Child Home programs. They are Jericho Road Community Health Center and King Urban Life Center. Through Jericho, 100 families participate in the program at a time. In many cases, the parents are resettled refugees who may be learning to speak English themselves.
“It’s not a tutoring program,” said Debbie Fleischmann, who runs Jericho’s Parent-Child Home Program which is funded through a combination of grants and donations. “We model for the parents how to use books and toys to increase literacy in the homes. That in turn gets the children ready for school.”
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