Standing on a stage in the cafeteria of Fort Belvoir Elementary, School Board member Steve Hunt (at-large) described the thrill of a successful jet flight over China and the agony of a less successful flight, one that left him adrift in the ocean for four weeks before his rescue.
“And that was all before junior high,” he added. Growing up in a rural area of Prince George’s County, Hunt’s childhood was enlivened by regular trips to the local library in Upper Marlboro. The books he read in his small library allowed him to travel to exotic places all over the world. Watching movies and television, Hunt said, children only participate in the adventure from the outside. “The beauty of books is that you’re looking at it from the inside.”
Children growing up in military families will physically visit many new places. But their frequent moves make them less likely to form connections to the libraries in their schools and communities. Fairfax County School Superintendent Jack Dale said one-third of Fort Belvoir Elementary’s students leave the school each year.
On Saturday, Feb. 3, Hunt, Dale and School Board chairman Dan Storck, who represents the Mount Vernon District, were at the school to celebrate a new initiative funded by the federal government to forge closer bonds between military families and the libraries on bases, in schools and in the communities outside the gates. They were met by Fort Belvoir’s Lt. Colonel Janet Simmons and officials from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), an independent federal agency that awarded $250,000 to librarians from Fort Belvoir Elementary, the Army’s Van Noy library and the county’s Kingstowne library for “Project Excells,” a program designed by the three systems to entice transient students into libraries during the brief time they are on base and encourage parents to take advantage of opportunities in the surrounding community. “Connecting with a community can be hard for military families,” said Susan Thornley, a coordinator for the county’s public libraries, “Libraries can assist with the adjustment to new surroundings.”
LAST YEAR, 183 libraries and museums applied for National Leadership Grants from the IMLS. Thirty seven were chosen, said Susan Malbin, a senior program officer. Project Excells will provide educational opportunities for parents and children, including parent-training for pre-kindergarten literacy, a summer bookmobile, literacy instruction, author visits, field trips, homework help and guidance in county services. A major aspect of the program will be a parallel study that evaluates the effectiveness of these programs. It will ultimately result in guidelines for replicable projects on bases all over the country.
Malbin praised the Project Excells team for the quality of their grant application. She said the process is a grueling one. Marie Balocki knows this only too well. As the Army’s liaison to the public schools, Balocki helped draft the successful 2006 application as well as an application in 2005 that was not accepted. The first time around, evaluators loved the idea, but questioned whether the application presented a practical plan for achieving it. Balocki and her colleagues took the criticism to heart, scaled-down the project’s scope. Their application explicitly detailed how they would implement Project Excells for elementary school students, and how they would create a model that the other 130 Army bases in the country could adapt.
IMLS Deputy Director Mary Chute said that while other grant-seekers focused on high-tech, data driven projects, the Belvoir excited IMLS by putting their emphasis squarely on community. She suggested that by focusing on a single, specific group of people, Project Excells will create a template that is more replicable than many projects based on digital ones and zeros. “This is a national model.”
Malbin also praised the three partners for teamwork that transcended school, county and military bureaucracy. “It’s very hard to collaborate. It’s playing outside your comfort zone.”
Balocki said the effort of overcoming logistical challenges (which extended to the mailing of invitations to the kick-off event) will be worth it if the project increases student literacy and encourages families to visit off-base libraries and other resources. “We truly, truly have families on this installation that never leave,” she said. “They never go out this gate.”
Now, the Kingstowne librarian will be visiting the base for programs and will also encourage families to return the favor. A Belvoir family’s brief trip to Kingstowne may be the first step towards Washington, D.C. and beyond. “It makes them feel safer crossing the line when they know the person on the other side,” said Malbin.
Balocki modified this concept. “I think we’ll find that the lines are going to be more blurry.”