by Kacie Ryan, Faculty Co-counselor

Literacy Alive! is a service project that Kappa Delta Pi chapters across the world participate in each year. The focus of the initiative is to empower literacy skills within participants. Participating chapters create their own programming that focuses on literacy skills related to cross curriculum programming, community partnerships, international impact, needs of diverse populations, and sustainable development. In these topics, the programming design is left open ended for participating chapters. Projects typically range from one day literacy events to on-going literacy programs. For more information visit the KDP’s Literacy Alive! page.

Our AES chapter has participated in Literacy Alive! for several years. Each year we create a Literacy Alive! committee who designs and implements our project. Our focus over the last few years has been on compiling teacher resources. We’ve also chosen to leverage our position as the first online chapter of KDP by providing our resources through different online platforms. Last year we created a Live Binder classroom resource. Our committee decided to focus on diverse populations and narrow that to students with behavioral disabilities. Committee members identified books about people with behavioral disabilities and created elementary level lesson plans and read aloud companions to accompany the books. The committee also complied some online resources that could help teachers working with and teaching students with behavioral disabilities. We assembled all of these resources into an online Live Binder to allow access to our project by any teacher, anywhere. You can check out last year’s project here.

As an officer board, we decided that our chapter’s project for this year will focus on digital literacy in K-12 education. The American Library Association defines digital literacy as “the ability to use information and communication technologies to find, evaluate, create, and communicate information, requiring both cognitive and technical skills." Our committee will work with this topic to create our 2017/2018 Literacy Alive! project. The committee is forming now! If you’re interested in joining the committee, or have questions, please let us know by emailing kdp@wgu.edu.