By Jeanna Baxter White Four-year-old Tommy carefully considers the boxes of toys lining the Smart Start bookshelves before selecting a kit labeled “Sand and Water Play.” His mom, Emily MacCaull, waits patiently, allowing him to choose for himself. These toy kits are just one of the many resources Smart Start of Davie County offers residents […]
By Jeanna Baxter White Ohana is Hawaiian for family, and for camp counselor Nataevia Dowling, that family includes the students and staff at Brookstone Schools in Charlotte, NC. “What I love about Brookstone is the feeling of being connected to a big family,” said Dowling, who started attending Brookstone in the 4th grade. “Here […]
By Jeanna Baxter White They are piled on tables, stacked in boxes, and filling up the small back room, but the employees at Bookmarks don’t mind because these books will soon provide Winston-Salem/Forsyth County School libraries with hundreds of desperately needed shiny new books through “Book Build.” Since the winter of 2018, 10,000+ books have […]
By Jeanna Baxter White Can 16 days transform a child’s educational experience? One hundred forty-four Davie County students are finding out as they attend this summer’s Read to Achieve camp at Cornatzer Elementary School. Read to Achieve camp is designed to help third-graders meet state requirements in reading to advance to the fourth grade. The […]
By Jeanna Baxter White As the opening notes of the Letterland theme song began to play, fifty excited preschoolers dressed as their favorite Letterland character began to march in a slow circle around the churchyard. Annie Apple led the parade followed by Bouncy Ben, Clever Cat, and all of their fellow Letterland characters. The students […]
By Jeanna Baxter White Davie County Schools is continuing to make strides in addressing key challenges to kindergarten readiness. Through DavieLEADS, a partnership with the Mebane Foundation, Davie County Schools has had the unique opportunity to pilot solutions that can move the needle in early childhood education. From the outset, Peggy Nuckolls, director of preschool […]
By Jeanna Baxter White Based on the early success of a two-year $100,000 partnership between Yadkin County Schools, the Mebane Foundation, and Unifi, the Foundation’s board solidified its intentions to invest heavily in Yadkin County Schools by voting unanimously at its most-recent semi-annual meeting to award an additional $57,000 to the school system for the […]
By Jeanna Baxter White “The Wheels on the Bus go Round and Round” …. Just ask the NC Pre-K students from Almost Home Child Care who recently rode a school bus to William R. Davie Elementary School for a tour as they prepare to enter kindergarten this fall. For many, it was the first time […]
By Jeanna Baxter White “We aren’t looking for advocates anymore, we are looking for accomplices and we have them in Davie County,” says Greg Alcorn, founder of ApSeed Early Childhood Education. “The Mebane Foundation has been the rockstar of all partners for ApSeed.” The Mebane Foundation and ApSeed Early Childhood Education joined forces last spring […]
By Jeanna Baxter White For two hours on a Monday afternoon, the Central Davie gym resembled a workshop. Seated at long tables, teachers were talking and laughing while cutting word strips, sorting and bagging colored squares, and taping the edges of shower board to create small whiteboards. The teachers were attending one of three “make […]
By Jeanna Baxter White It’s 3:15 in the afternoon. While most of their friends are finished with school for the day, four third-grade girls are bursting through the door of the Mebane Foundation office in downtown Mocksville to take advantage of an amazing opportunity to boost their literacy skills. The Mebane Foundation is piloting a […]
By Jeanna Baxter White It’s 7:45 a.m. on Monday, November 12th, and hundreds of Davie County Schools’ teachers and administrators are filing into Davie County High School for Davie Experience 6, a full day of workshops and collaborative sessions designed to provide professional development for all certified staff in the district. A key workshop for […]
By Jeanna Baxter White Davie County Schools is on a roll–an honor roll. The North Carolina Department of Public Instruction has released its statewide End-of-Grade (EOG) test data for 2017-18, and Davie County has moved from 45th to 17th out of 115 districts in 3rd-grade reading proficiency. Based on last year’s test results, Cooleemee Elementary […]
By Jeanna Baxter White The Mebane Charitable Foundation has approved a grant of $200,000 to Bookmarks to support “Book Build: Fostering Connections by Building Collections,” a three-year, $450,000 initiative focused on infusing the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County School libraries with current, culturally-relevant books. But there is a catch ….. while $50,000 will be released immediately, $50,000 of […]
By Jeanna Baxter White Assessment of child progress, a National Association for the Education of Young Children program standard, helps teachers to improve their teaching and enhances student learning. Currently, observation-based assessment is the most common assessment approach in Head Start and state-funded Pre-K programs. However, it is also time-consuming for teachers, who spend four to […]