“Our collective responsibility to the next generation is to ensure all our students achieve the promise of literacy, which is an essential component of a choice-filled life. The work of the Learn4Life partnership is to find and scale the bright spots that promote literacy to ensure that all children in our region have an opportunity to succeed.”
Dr. Kenneth Zeff, Executive Director
Learn4Life is a collaborative effort comprised of school systems, local communities, businesses, and nonprofits advancing cradle-to-career educational success for the more than 600,000 students in the metro Atlanta region. Recognizing that the metro region’s long-term vitality and prosperity depends on ensuring today’s youth are prepared to be the next generation of leaders and citizens, Learn4Life is working to close the opportunity gaps that currently exist in the region comprised of Clayton, Cobb, DeKalb, Fulton, and Gwinnett counties.
Learn4Life is organized around three networks advancing early literacy, eighth-grade math, and postsecondary success, using data to identify, lift up, and scale “bright spots” of success in the region, which reflect the Campaign’s four pillar framework for action.
To ensure that children receive abundant language nutrition, Learn4Life is partnering with Reach Out and Read, an evidence-based approach that integrates literacy into standard well child pediatric visits, providing books to children and encouraging parents to read with their children regularly.
Recognizing that unaddressed vision issues limit children’s success in school, Learn4Life is working to scale Vision To Learn, which sends mobile vision clinics to schools to screen children. In 2019, more than 5,000 students received glasses.
Learn4Life is promoting positive learning climates through ArtsNow, which helps educators integrate the arts into core content instruction, and Social Emotional Engagement – Knowledge and Skills (SEE-KS), which helps educators implement a relationship oriented, curriculum agnostic framework to ensure early learning and grade school students are engaged in learning.
To build the capacity of all adults who work with children to adopt language and literacy practices that build the foundation children need to be great readers, Learn4Life is the backbone of an innovative literacy initiative with the Rollins Center for Language and Literacy, Marietta City Schools, and other key partners engaged in the science of reading from birth through third grade.
Learn4Life continues to share data, learn from and with local partners, and highlight and build on what is working in Atlanta to enable metro area students to learn for today and also learn for life.
To learn more about Learn4Life, visit their website.