Authors Engaging Students: School-Community Collaboration to Improve Student Literacy

Abstract

Literacy is a basic skill that is essential to participate in society and to improve a person’s knowledge and potential throughout life. Guilford County Schools, a school district in North Carolina, USA, is collaborating with Greensboro Bound, a local non-profit literary organization, to maximize student motivation to read and write through asynchronous author visits during library lessons. School
library circulation data, exit surveys of program participants, focus group interviews with school media specialists and students, and student test scores suggest that learning from different authors motivate students to read more and recognize their own potential as readers and writers. However, programs like this require a shared vision and long-term collaboration among several community partners including authors, publishers, book sellers, all dedicated to the mission of increasing childhood and young adult literacy.