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!
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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!
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.