Frequently Asked Questions

Training

How do you become a certified Motheread^® instructor and receive the curriculum?

Persons interested in using the Motheread instructional model must attend the four-day institute, "Using Story as a Way to Teach." This intensive 20-hour experiential training helps participants learn how to integrate the Motheread approach and materials into their existing programs. The Institute offers educators and social service professionals the philosophy, structure, materials, and curriculum needed to develop parent and child literacy programs in a variety of communities.

All certified instructors are placed on the Motheread National Office mailing list and receive regular newsletters, plus updated instructional materials. Certified instructors are also welcome to call the National Office for technical assistance; however, instructors in Motheread-affiliate states are encouraged to consult their affiliate office for technical assistance.

Who usually attends The Institute?

Participants are individuals who plan to teach either Motheread/Fatheread^® classes for adults or Story Exploring classes for children or both. Other institute participants include those who will be involved in supervising local or state Motheread programs. This institute is designed for direct service providers, not persons using a "train the trainer" model.

Curriculum

How does Motheread develop its curriculum?

Motheread, Inc. designs and develops curriculum through a process that reflects the needs and interests of parents and children. The process requires focus groups of potential program participants and related personnel to provide the issues that need to be addressed.

Next, a curriculum development team produces the curriculum materials in response to these concerns. This material is then reviewed, field tested, revised, and evaluated. This method of learner-centered, participatory curriculum design ensures success in a variety of settings.

In some cases, Motheread, Inc. works with its state affiliates in recruiting and conducting focus groups. This allows for a diversity of groups and interests from across the country to be represented in the Motheread curriculum and materials.

How are adults taught?

Using the Motheread nationally acclaimed curriculum, philosophy, and methodology, instructors help adults improve their own literacy skills and those of their children. Teachers help students develop skills from a socio-contextual vantage point. Classes include the reading and discussion of carefully selected children's books, examination of adult literature, and a variety of writing activities.

How large are the classes and where are they typically taught?

Motheread/Fatheread classes are small-usually made up of 8 to 12 students-since research shows that adults learn best in small groups where learning is reinforced through the resulting social network. Classes are typically taught in partnership with local programs already skilled in delivering services to parents and children. Partner agencies provide class sites and recruit students. Motheread/Fatheread classes are held in many different community settings, including community colleges, public housing communities, schools, correctional facilities, child care centers, family resource centers, and churches.

A typical session of a Motheread/Fatheread class runs for 8 to 12 weeks, for a total of at least 20 hours of instruction, so that measurable results can be achieved. Motheread/Fatheread instructors usually teach classes as two-member teams.

Does Motheread provide services for children?

Through its Story Exploring training and curriculum, Motheread teaches adults (teachers and parents) how to use reading aloud to build literacy and critical-thinking skills in children. The Motheread Story Exploring curriculum—based on 127 titles—focuses primarily on the needs of children from birth through 11 years of age.

What are the components of the Motheread curriculum?

The Motheread curriculum uses commercially available, multicultural children's literature. It consists of three components:

1. The Literacy and Parent Education Teacher's Guide teaches reading,writing, speaking, and listening skills in a child-and family-development context.
2. The Story Exploring Handbook uses discussion questions and activities to build reading, critical-thinking, and problem-solving skills of children. For each book in the Motheread Story Exploring curriculum, the handbook contains a guide for use by teachers in the classroom, as well as a Story Exploring extender for use by parents with their children at home. The take-home parent education plans are also available in Spanish.

What other books are needed for a local program?

The curriculum is based on children's books and short narratives and poems. The narratives and poems are incorporated into the Teacher's Guide for use with adults. Local and state programs are responsible for purchasing their own children's books for use in teaching classes for adults and children or for donating to adult students or programs. Local and state programs using the Motheread curriculum are responsible for purchasing their own books for use in teaching classes or donating to adult students, schools, child care centers, etc.

The number of titles and copies per title needed are determined by the local program's budget and by the needs of the individual classes. In general, programs are advised to purchase multiple copies of books for use in adult classes, based on average class size and the number of concurrent classes. Programs implementing Story Exploring curriculum for children will need to purchase at least one copy of each of the books on which lessons are based.

How does the curriculum reflect diversity?

From its beginning, Motheread, Inc. has been responsive to the needs of all its students. The goal has always been to use in the Motheread curriculum excellent children's books which reflect the diversity of our rich national cultural heritage. The Motheread National Office staff, with the help of nationally recognized experts, has reviewed hundreds of children's books by authors, and about children and adults, from diverse backgrounds. The resulting Abiyoyo (African-American), Amikoonse (Native American) and Angel's Kite (Latino) annotated booklists are used in Motheread programming nationwide. In addition to these titles, which have also been incorporated into the curriculum, Motheread, Inc. continues to incorporate stories reflecting additional cultural heritages, including Asian-American.

The inclusion by Motheread of excellent children's literature from a wide variety of cultural backgrounds provides parents, teachers, and children opportunities to see people like themselves in stories. At the same time, these stories help readers understand and appreciate stories, people, and traditions from other backgrounds.

Affiliates

Where are Motheread programs located?

Motheread, Inc. is a national training and curriculum development organization with a multi-state affiliate network. Currently, there are state-level offices in 8 states and 2 territories, with nonaffiliated programs in 30 additional states.

Currently, states and territories operating as Motheread affiliates are in Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Guam, Hawai'i, Mariana Islands, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin. Statewide programming in both North and South Carolina is coordinated by the Motheread National Office.

How does a state become a Motheread affiliate?

To become a Motheread affiliate, a state will need to:

• Employ a Motheread/Fatheread coordinator to be responsible for state implementation and serve as the Motheread contact person.
• Receive training by national staff in Raleigh, NC, prior to hosting any state training.
• Develop a state implementation plan and have it approved by the National Office.
• Monitor local program implementation, evaluate quality, make plans for revision and expansion, and provide semi-annual reports to the National Office.
• Arrange trainings in accordance with the state implementation plan and in cooperation with the Motheread National Office. The state's Motheread coordinator must work with the National Office to determine rates and frequency of trainings.
• Represent Motheread/Fatheread programming to appropriate professional organizations and agencies within its own state.
• Work closely with direct-service providers to ensure program quality.
• Attend an annual meeting at the request of the National Office.

The Motheread National Office will:

• Provide technical assistance to state coordinators in program planning and implementation.
• Schedule and staff trainings.
• Furnish all certified instructors with the Motheread quarterly newsletter.
• Develop new curriculum and materials.
• Develop multi-state initiatives and proposals. Affiliates will be informed and invited to participate as appropriate.
• Inform the affiliate of any requests for training or programming that come to the National Office from that affiliate's state.

What is the Motheread/Humanities connection?

Presidents and executive directors of our state affiliate humanities commissions, councils, and foundations have listed a number of reasons they see their organizations benefiting from working with Motheread, Inc. One reason cited is the fact that the Motheread approach places humanities-based training and curriculum within already established literacy and family development infrastructures.A second reason is that participating humanities councils see our approach as being high-impact and cost-effective. Front-line family educators trained by Motheread become strong advocates for continuing the Motheread program and incorporating it into school and human service agency budgets year after year. Furthermore, affiliate humanities councils have noted the following outcomes from participating in Motheread:

• Comprehensive literacy development for low-income, high-stress families increasing capacity for these students to question and to chart their lives increased parental ability to cope and deter abuse, as a result of understanding their children's developmental stages, needs, and capacities the ability to track long-term effects of humanities outreach and to use this positive information to influence legislators and philanthropists heightened public profile as a state leader in family literacy
• High demand for training from human service partners

The Alabama Humanities Foundation describes the extended benefits of the Motheread program this way: "Central to the Motheread curricula is the idea of the everyday usefulness of story. This concept develops in parents, and in turn their children, the confidence and capacity to question their own and others' preconceptions about "the way things have to be." Parents are then enabled to make life changes with more certainty. Their children, as studies have shown, become better students."