Book Club for At-risk girls. Love the idea. Good luck!

Wonderful Elizabeth! Let me know how I can help you reach out to the TFA Alumni Network about this opportunity. Sonya

Good Luck Elizabeth!

This is awesome! Let me know what I can do to help especially over the summer. I love designing curriculum and will aid in whatever manner you might need from good ole Charlotte. ~renee~

Great idea Elizabeth! The most current studies I've seen is this is exactly the group to reach to break the cycles of abuse, addiction, etc. Instill the values in the future matriarch, and you've created the best opportunity for them to be carried on.

Elizabeth - I wish you many, many blessings in your quest to help educate disadvantaged/low income girls and assist them in the preparation of becoming successful adults regardless of their financial and/or personal status and the stigma that is attached to low income areas, especially for girls. I am a firm believer that one person CAN make a difference in this world. You may want to consider a seminar of sorts for the targeted group of girsl - not just good reading materials. Many times, especially if the speaker is from a similar background and is now successful, the audience has someone they can relate to, especially if that speaker is or has been a mentor to others. Best of luck to you.

So glad to see this is plugging along. I think it is such a GREAT idea!

It has been a very long time, jr. high has, but I think I was enjoying Edgar Allen Poe, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Ray Bradbury and *maybe* some Vonnegut. I think I didn't find Vonnegut until high school, but I did love his writing as a child. Robert Heinlein and some other old school sci fi. P.G.Wodehouse.

Elizabeth, What a wonderful opportunity for Dorchester county. Kuddos to you. Take care, Mary

I love the logo!

Cheers!!! Great work on this one!! There should be 1000 more of you scattered throughout the country RIGHT NOW!! Such a powerful and daring move to perpetuate change -

Wonderful idea!!! Any type of program to get individuals (especially children) to read more has merit. The biggest question becomes to books and whether you defer to canonical literature that has greater inferential value, but may prove less interesting or tailor your book selections to culturally relevant texts that really capture the minds and experiences of the readers. Either avenue has tremendous upside. Let me know if I can help in any way.

Good luck! This sounds amazing.

Good luck Elizabeth! Anna told me you were doing this and it sounds AMAZING!!!

John Barth would be proud of you. He wrote "The Sotweed Factor" and lived in Cambridge, MD. Good luck with this.

This sounds great Elizabeth! Good luck.

I am so, so, so proud to be sharing a space on Ideablob with you! I think you've got a great organization going and I can't wait to hear of its successes. I am happy to help you in any way I can--please just let me know what you need.

sorry, but I think this is a bad idea. boys are failing in school, not girls. research the facts. please make this gender-neutral or do it for boys.

Thank Peyton Marshall for letting me know about this. It sounds phenomenal. I do hope you see fit to expand it to include boys, though. My twins (9 yrs) are rising 4th graders at Villa Heights Academic Center in Charlotte, a magnet school which serves disadvantaged children with a learning immersion and talent development program. My boys are in the TD program, but as an active parent, I see a lot of black boys in the LI program who need this sort of program MORE than the girls do. The test scores reflect this, and the crime rate in the low-income African American neighborhoods points to this need as well. --Bill Burkholder

Good luck, Elizabeth. It really is a great Idea!

In response to teriincali--Having taught in a low income community, I am acutely aware of the needs of at-risk communities. While it is true that more boys are failing than girls, too many girls in low income communities are failing and until every child (male or female) in every school is succeeding academically and attending college, we are not doing our job. Addressing these issues requires an array of solutions for both boys and girls because boys and girls have different needs and interests. Girl Talk is just one possible solution designed to meet the needs and interests of girls, and educators are working tirelessly to develop unique solutions to address the needs of boys as well. A book club will not appeal to adolescent boys but an after school club that incorporates sports and…more literature or video games and literature would. Furthermore, teen pregnancy is a huge issue in this country. Dorchester County, where Girl Talk will be piloted, has the highest teen birth rate in the state of Maryland. And, teen pregnancy is not only a leading cause of dropout among adolescent girls but also contributes to creating a cycle of poverty in low-income communities. One of the principal goals of Girl Talk is to use literature to improve participants' self-awareness and sense of future, so they will avoid the risky behaviors that lead to teen pregnancy. In this way, Girl Talk is meeting a specific need affecting young women and low-income communities as a whole because it has the potential to break the cycle of poverty. If you email me at edevlin@girltalkreads.org, I would be happy to share the specific statistics and research I have done prior to launching Girl Talk that support the necessity of the idea. There is not a one-size-fits-all solution to the education crisis in our country, and it is going to take a variety of innovative ideas to address the many specific issues causing educational failure. Girl Talk is one such idea, and I hope that others will consider innovative ideas for boys. If it is an issue you are passionate about, maybe you could develop an initiative responding to the needs of that specific population! Thank you for you comment, and I hope I have responded to your concerns.

I love this idea! I've been an avid reader since I was a young child, primarily because of the summer reading programs at my school and the emphasis on literature. I especially like the idea of empowering the girls to become leaders. This is a GREAT way to encourage that, and involve the arts and literature as well. Best of luck to you!!

Elizabeth, Sounds like a great idea. Keeping working it! dfmiller

While there are enormous needs for both boys and girls in under privileged communities, I think Elizabeth has a good idea to start with what she knows and see where it goes.There is enormous need. I am not an educator so do not have the data at my fingertips, but I believe there is likely data that show that under-educated girls are more likely to engage in risky behaviors that lead to unwanted pregnancy, which further feeds the poverty cycle. I also would speculate that the achievement gap is likely much smaller in under privileged communities.

Awesome idea - I think you have a great idea with a lot of potential! Good luck!!

What a wonderful idea. I have thought about starting a book club with 4th/5th grade girls in a low-income/high-minority school where I have taught. I will love to follow your journey. Keep up the good work.

AWESOME, AWESOME IDEA! The ENTIRE country needs this and I see that it is your hope to be able to implement this on a larger and larger scale! We need ALOT more of this kind of thinking in America!!!

I have to say, why does this idea have to be targeted solely at girls? At one point girls were disadvantaged at school, but it seems now like the pendulum has swung the other way. Boys are the ones who are falling behind at school. When I go to the bookstore everything seems to be written for girls - where are the little boy books? Boys need the love too!

you go girl, thank god someone is still teaching in the middle schools....uncle steve:)

layboogie--please see my comment above about why I have focused on girls.

Great idea, Elizabeth! I will be sure to pass this on to others. Good luck!

Great idea, Elizabeth! I will be sure to pass this on to others. Good luck!

God Luck!

This idea is a great idea would help girls all over the world, but what about the boys?

This is a wonderful idea. Girls become women, who, in turn, become moms, and moms are their children's first teachers. Empowering girls in this way will surely have a positive impact on the future.

I'm not impressed with this idea, it is sexist as other posters have said. I've read the rebuttals to that but they do not really clear up the concerns I have about this idea. If it was gender neutral it would be great, and I do wish you luck with whatever version of it you go ahead with though.

Great idea! I will be sure to pass this on to others. Good luck! (FYI - I work with Andrew!)

As one of Top 100 Women in Maryland 2007, I applaud your idea! Sometimes girls need to be singled out, not to be sexist but to help them achieve in a what they perceive as a male dominated world!! Good Luck!!

Good Luck Elizabeth!! It is a phenomenal concept and I wish you great success!

I don't quite understand the logic of it being gender related at all, especially the gender which statistically needs it less. There is absolutely no logical reason to only teach girls other than that you may find it somewhat easier since you clearly have some bias probably from more experience teaching girls rather than boys. Either way it's entirely unfair to at-risk boys and no system should discriminate entirely on gender, the education should go to the most at-risk in a means tested system as opposed to an entirely arbitrary and sexist **** based system. Your rebuttal including teen pregnancy is really unrelated, unless this is going to be themed around **** education literature (which I imagine there is very little of) it makes absolutely no difference to that issue other than a v…moreery very weak argument that better educated girls are less likely to have unprotected ****, which is based on education including **** education as opposed to an entirely literature based curriculum as would occur within this program. Just because boys aren't as openly enthusiastic about books does not mean you should discriminate against them, if it's entirely voluntarily then it would be a large majority of girls anyway so there's no point of exclusive about it and shutting off the genuinely interested boys. Positive discrimination is just the same as negative discrimination because discrimination in just a set of balancing scales.

This is an awesome idea, Elizabeth. Good luck!

Reading group for girls is great but your rebuttal still made me raise an eyebrow. Saying that boys aren't as into books is a serious generalization. Not to be anecdotal, but I have male friends who read way more than I do. And I read a lot. Also, reading didn't help me regarding ****. I was given a text book listed with STD's and told not to do it. I understand that there are some issues men and woman differ on, but I can't see how you can't hold a group open to gender and give people options on what to read next in group if they differ with issues regarding gender/**** or whatever. You can split them based on the book they are reading and they can all come back and share their thoughts and ask each other questions. I work for a non profit organization for teens between the ages of 12-17 …moreand the things they want to learn are very similar and always empowering. Gender shouldn't leave them out of reading and learning. Anyway, I can't remember what I read in high school, I just remember it was boring. I'm not a fantasy fan and I don't read much fiction. I loved reading things about social change, people and groups standing up against oppression, and the history of movements. In middle school, I hardly knew who Malcolm X was. And with our schools as they were, I NEVER heard of gay history. Middle school is a great time to give them those things where they might find inspiration.

I think this is a great idea. Please let me know how I can help out.

Hey Elizabeth, It's been fun (and stressful) running side by side all month long. I'm going to miss seeing your cute logo every day. I wish you lots of success with the program you are creating. It's great that you have so much support, and you seem like a real dynamo. I can't wait to see how it turns out. Best of luck to you, Cindy