Tuesday, June 10, 2003

WILMINGTON, NC -- Imaginative children should make for better readers and in turn better learners. The Creative Writing Department at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington plans to test this hypothesis through the project “Community Creativity: Closing the Achievement Gap.”

Using a $10,000 grant from the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, creative writing faculty and graduate students will work with low-income children and their families to improve literacy. UNCW’s proposal is one of nine from across the country to receive funding.

"Our goal is to instill a sense of fun, exploration and pleasure in the learning process,” said Mark Cox, creative writing chair and co-author of the grant. Starting this fall and working in conjunction with the Parenting Place of the Exchange Clubs, the Southeastern Alliance for Community Change (SACC), the Cape Fear Literacy Center, the Student Coalition for Adult Literacy Education, and the Boys Club, Cox said his department would conduct weekly workshops for up to 70 children to improve their literacy level. They will use activities such as storytelling, reading, writing and imaginative play, which will be geared for children ages three to 10. Graduate students, who will conduct the workshops, will benefit through the opportunity to design and teach curricula promoting literacy.

"This initiative owes a great deal to Naomi Swinton, one of our graduate students, and the board chair of the SACC,” said Cox. “Our hope is that these activities will strike a chord in these children and encourage them to continue to read and learn.”

The department will also conduct monthly “Families Create” sessions. These three-hour workshops, held with the oversight and expertise of parent educators and local literacy groups, will help parents learn motivational and instructional skills to involve their children in the learning process, Cox stated.

"We want parents to understand that learning to read and write at an early age is important. Numerous studies indicate that children whose parents promoted reading and writing at an early age achieved more success later in life,” said Cox.

The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, based in Princeton, N.J., has its origins in a program that began in 1946 that helped create a generation of college teachers and intellectual leaders. Today, the foundation funds programs that promote a renaissance for liberal arts and sciences in higher education, liberal arts-based partnerships between schools and universities that bridge their historical divide or initiatives to increase access to educational opportunities for all.

For more information, call Mark Cox at 910/962-7063.