MLS recognized at OKC public schools board meeting

The Metropolitan Library System (MLS) has long partnered with local school districts in an effort to assist parents in becoming the first and best teacher for their children through story time. Through the visionary leadership of Director Dana Morrow, the MLS Outreach Department has initiated projects that have impacted early learning and school readiness for children in all districts in the greater metro area. In 2008, Lisa Wood, Children’s Coordinator for MLS, developed a portable 1-2-3 Play With Me program that models for parents the importance of play in early childhood development and literacy skills. With the assistance of Smart Start Central OK volunteer, Marci Brueggen, and the vision of your principals, the library took 1,2,3 Play With Me into your district schools and soon added other early literacy and brain development programs such as Toddler Aerobics and Mother Goose on the Loose. Parents were responsive to the invitation to bring their birth to five year olds into the schools for these events, to visit in the school libraries of their older siblings and to have their preschoolers get ready for their own learning success when they entered school. Superintendent Carl Springer and Dr. DeAnn Davis saw the value of these informal efforts in your schools and adopted them in 54 of the 55 elementary schools during the past two semesters. The partnership of your district, the MLS and SSCO provides parents of young children opportunities to stimulate early learning through the Smart Start in the Schools which you fund through Title I monies. SSCO has assumed the administrative task of overseeing Smart Start in the Schools and MLS joins them with planning, training and maintaining a high level of quality and access. Children who are engaged with their families in early learning experiences from birth have a greater chance of success when entering school for the first time. They have the opportunity of developing grade level skills at the appropriate time with time for enrichment rather than remediation.