Frequently Asked Questions
General Overview
What is Preface, and how does the model work?
Preface is a national 501(c)(3) philanthropic initiative that empowers communities to combat early childhood illiteracy and secure foundational educational opportunities for the next generation!
Our model works by first pairing a local high school and local elementary school together as Preface Partners. Our expert team then works with the high school administration to select and train student leaders (“Preface Ambassadors”) in clinically-endorsed educational best practices, including finger-led reading, dialogic responses, voice inflections, and dyadic scaffolding.
Our Ambassadors culturally and linguistically reflect the communities they serve, allowing them to maximize engagement capacity with young students most in need of educational assistance and mentorship.
We then send our Ambassadors directly into the elementary school classrooms to act as free supplemental resources for local educators on the ground, allowing for highly personal engagement and reading assistance in small group classroom settings!
Preface’s relational model has helped elementary school students make gains in literacy skills nearly twice as fast as their peers, while high schoolers gain firsthand service experience and a newfound appreciation for careers in education.
Additionally, Preface has been recognized by the GA Dept. of Education as an innovative World Languages program and is advised by experts affiliated with a wide variety of institutions, including the Georgia Leadership Institute for School Improvement, McKinsey & Company, J.P. Morgan Chase, Microsoft, and Princeton University.
How much does the Preface program cost?
Preface is free of cost for our partner schools! Thanks to generous external support and our innovative community empowerment model, Preface is able to offer our innovative tools and framework to our Preface Partner schools at absolutely no cost.
Does the Preface program need school district approval?
Generally, no - though this may vary from community to community. Schools have often been able to act autonomously to take advantage of our free homegrown resources and service opportunities for their students, bypassing the need for district approval by implementing the Preface model as an extracurricular activity for the student Ambassadors – such as a recurring Key Club or National Honor Society service hours events.
Additionally, with the possibility of a return to full virtual learning for at least a portion of the upcoming school year, Preface has proactively developed a proprietary and secure web-based Preface Portal, exclusively for Preface Partner schools, to foster student engagement through live extracurricular mentorship sessions - completely free of charge!
Given the current COVID-19 situation, our plans are still up in the air.
Can we still be a Preface Partner school?
Yes! In fact, Preface has developed a Virtual Ambassadorship program as a no-cost way to keep socially distanced students engaged during Digital Learning Days. Preface provides free and engaging Bilingual Storytime recordings in a variety of languages as supplementary programming for our educational partners!
Additionally, starting in the fall of 2020, Preface Ambassadors will be able to securely connect with their young students through our proprietary and secure web-based Preface Portal - all at the click of a button! This first-of-its-kind mentorship tool is available free of charge exclusively for Preface Partner schools engaged in virtual learning - and is just one more way Preface is dedicated to helping teachers mitigate learning challenges through the COVID-19 pandemic - with no additional administrative hassle.
How will the Preface program adapt to my school’s specific needs?
Together, we’ll create a customized plan based on your expert insights and local needs! There’s no one-size-fits-all model for education, which is why our flexible model is tailored to each of our Partner schools and what works best for your community.
Because we work alongside teachers to train a community's own bilingual high school students in educational best practices, we’re able to promote relational engagement from the ground up. Plus, by sending our Ambassadors directly into partner elementary school classrooms, we’re able to enhance your classroom impacts while assisting with literacy sessions in smaller group settings.
Together, we ensure that our Ambassadors are building on concepts and methods already being taught in your classrooms - and we evaluate results using the same methods you do, state by state, community by community. Best of all, there’s no extra paper-pushing necessary when you become a Preface Partner!
Does Preface serve both monolingual and multilingual students?
Yes! Preface works with students from various cultural and linguistic backgrounds, including monolingual students.
Across all student populations, whether they’re struggling due to linguistic, cultural, or socioeconomic factors, Preface has demonstrated proven results in altering the trajectory of a child’s literacy acquisition and (during virtual learning times) mitigating learning drawbacks from a loss of in-person instruction.