Who We Are

We are Pam Nason, Anne Hunt, and Pam Whitty at the Early Childhood Centre at the University of New Brunswick. Check out our website for more details about us and our other work. This project Parenting for a Literate Community is the Anglophone component of a Health Canada CAPC/CPNP National Projects Fund Project sponsored by The Early Childhood Centre, UNB in partnership with Literacy NB Inc., N.B. Health and Community Services, N.B. Department of Education, and the Fredericton Regional Family Resource Centre.

In this project, we worked with Early Intervention and Family Resource staff to strengthen the literacy development of priority preschool children and their parents. This work involved literacy programs for children, parents, children and parents together and a training component for Early Intervention and Family Resource staff. Our goal was to work within the existing infrastructure to strengthen the literacies of home and centre based programs and to nurture a more coordinated approach to effective literacy education.

Parenting for a Literate Community...

• honours diverse family circumstances, values and literacies;
• values and supports parents and guardians as the child's primary literacy teachers;
• celebrates the family's own everyday experiences and stories, and draws upon resources in domestic and community contexts;
• uses what parents and children already know as the springboard to project them into other literate communities;
• strengthens connections between community based agencies to provide for effective support and continuities in young children's literacy development.

The program is designed to be flexible and responsive to emerging family needs and priorities. The professionals and families involved shape it according to their own needs and circumstances, and fashion it to help them accomplish their hopes and dreams.