The word is out — at Mason-Dixon Elementary School.
Well, actually, lots of words are out at the school near Blacksville.
And more — whole lexicons, dictionaries and chapter books of them — are on the way.
Mason-Dixon just received a $50,000 grant to promote its literacy programs from the West Virginia Public Education Collaborative.
The Mon school was among eight recipients, including Berkeley County Schools and Kanawha County Schools, receiving the outlay totaling $450,000 in funding.
Megan Bacorn, Mason-Dixon’s assistant principal who began her career in education as a reading specialist, said Thursday she already knew this story was going to have a happy ending.
“We’re excited,” she said. “This is going to help us close the gap.”
She was talking about the intellectual chasm created two years ago by the pandemic, when schools were shuttered and whole districts had to reconfigure for remote learning.
Bacorn said the state offering will be used to feather Mason-Dixon’s NEST — the school’s acclaimed Nuture, Educate, Succeed Together initiative fronted by Principal Denice Corder in those pre-COVID days before 2020.
A big part of that program is its read-aloud component at home, which encourages children and parents to read together.
As a literacy specialist by training, Bacorn said she knows that isn’t always easy in an age of hyper-communication and people don’t always have the time to settle in with the printed word.
Or, the pixelated word, as it were.
Even so, she said, Mason-Dixon’s parents are just as enthused for the newly bankrolled launch as she said — “It’s still a blueprint, but we still need to get the luggage on board.”
While shedding the baggage of learning deficiencies, seconded collaborative director Donna Peduto — be they by COVID or other traditional gaps in learning.
Peduto, who is executive director of the collaborative, has a resume similar to Bacorn’s.
She too is a former classroom teacher who became a reading specialist as she launched the arc of her career into an administrative role.
“Arc,” is the word, Peduto said.
“Trajectory,” too.
“We need to break through literacy barriers and reach as many students in need as possible,” she said.
During the most-recent state language arts assessment for 2022, as Peduto reiterated, just 44% of West Virginia’s fourth-graders scored at the reading proficiency level.
And that, Mason-Dixon’s reading specialist-turned assistant principal said, is critical — by any definition.
“By third grade, you’re reading to learn,” Bacorn said.
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