Voices for Education-Arizona Children First

Voices for Education carries out its mission through community education, advocacy, and organizing, while providing programs for teacher development, parent awareness and leadership, and countywide literacy initiatives.

 

Voices for Education has provided advocacy training for over 500 parents, free professional development for over 700 teachers, and impacted thousands of students within Arizona’s public schools.  Core programs include: parent leadership institutes, professional development programs for teachers, and a prominent speaker series for teachers and the general public that features renowned education professionals. 

Here is how one teacher from last year’s Critical Friends training explained the program’s effectiveness:

 When students aren’t “getting” something, teachers try everything they know to help—and that’s the problem.  Everything you know might not be the right stuff.  I stay up late worrying about it, searching through books, looking online.  It is so frustrating.  But when I take that program to my CFG, the group looks at every angle—my assignments, my presentation, everything I’ve tried, and it’s as if the six smartest people I know are leading me out of a cave.  And that helps my students be better readers, better at math, and more engaged in every subject. 

Our Critical Friends program provides training and support for teachers and books for their students.

Children are often ecstatic about owning their own book, and this encourages them to read. A teacher from last year said that one of her students kept bringing his book back.  She would tell him, “No, this book is for you to keep.”  Finally, the child’s mother came in to return the book.  The teacher explained that the book was her son’s to keep.   A few weeks later, she noticed the little boy pulling the book out of his backpack.  She went over to tell him again the book was his to keep.  He said, “I know and that is why I always keep it close to me.”