On Monday, October 9th, The Learning Alliance Impact Team launched the first of a series of "Moonshot Mondays" as an opportunity for educators to come together in a professional learning community at the newly dubbed "Moonshot Learning Center" located at The Learning Alliance's office.

The collaborative inquiry group encourages participants to f ocus on a question of personal professional development; and t hen come together approximately monthly to learn from each other. 

K-2 classroom teachers and literacy coaches gathered, along with Moonshot Innovation Specialists to: 

• Build an  educator  community; 
• Share insights and challenges around Enriched Literacy; and 
• Start to develop their inquiry focus. 

Literacy and Science Coaches from Indian River Academy, Rosewood Magnet and 

Pelican Island Elementary connect over student success stories. 

Moonshot Media Center Innovation Specialists Sherry White from Vero Beach Elementary (left) and Julie Carroll from Rosewood Magnet (right) go on a scavenger hunt in the Moonshot Learning Center to find objects that represent their current excitement and concerns about the school year.

The Moonshot Rocket Bus recently had an opportunity  to  support our Moonshot partner, The Brackett Library, and  collect  more LOCAL stories filled with dreams and future hope for the "Voices: A Community Tapestry of Stories Project." The  Brackett Library is the most recent stop for Rocket after having the opportunity to travel across  the country  and stop at six Campaign for Grade-Level Reading cities in addition to impacting over 5,150 children and families over the last year. 

The Reading Rocket addresses the need to provide awareness and access to academic and social-emotional programs for all children and families in the county, in an effort to impact kindergarten readiness, reading on grade level by 3rd Grade, social-emotional needs, and parent/family involvement. The program manager, Bridget Lyons, is the Captain of the Rocket who is responsible to facilitate lessons and performances that engage participants of all ages.

With that in mind, the purpose of the "Voices Tapestry" is to engage the community in an art project where their collective expressions are  co-joined  together  in a "Tapestry/quilt."  Individuals are asked to share their "story" on a piece of fabric and draw a picture that represents them or their story. 

According to the Project for Public places, the benefits of engaging in community art projects are that they: 

At the Brackett Library open house, 50 community members enthusiastically 

participated in this Enriched Literacy project. 

TLA represented the Moonshot Moment for the Sebastian and Fellsmere Police Department's National Night Out events in October.

We are excited to have local law enforcement supporting our Moonshot Moment efforts.

Through the two events, we gave away over 300 books to our local families!

Research shows that having age-appropriate books in the home are strongly linked to academic achievement.  "They enhance the academic performance of children from families at all educational and population levels," the researchers write, "but the enhancement is greater for families with little education and low-status occupations."   Books Linked to Academic Achievement

Future reader = future leader!

Sebastian Police Department's PAO Jason Gillette, with their mascot "Mercy"

Did you know that 85 percent of all juveniles who interface with the juvenile  

court system  are functionally illiterate?

Dr.  Nivea Torres (KRC), Maria Pantoja (KRC), Alida Gomez (Literacy Services), 

Marie O'Brien (The Learning Alliance), Pastor Brown.

"It takes a community!"