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Alignment Collaborative for Education - ACE

Community Awareness

Elgin Area Chamber’s Women’s Leadership Circle Features Alignment’s Work in the Community

Alignment is featured non-profit at the Elgin Area Chamber's Women's Leadership Circle

Alignment joined the Elgin Area Chamber’s Women’s Leadership Circle as the featured non-profit at its July 26th networking event at Pinot’s Palette in St. Charles.  

The event provided a great opportunity to update community leaders about Alignment’s summer internship program as well as upcoming fall events like Explore 2022 scheduled for October 5th and 6th at the NOW Centre. Nancy Coleman as part of the networking group shared “this event is a great opportunity to recruit additional volunteers to serve as role models for our students as we work to increase opportunities to grow career interests and leadership skills within the region’s future workforce”. 

Thank you to the Elgin Area Chamber of Commerce for this networking opportunity.

Alignment Collaborative Selected as Featured Charity

Alignment Collaborative Selected as Featured Charity
Bear Family and City of Elgin Police Softball Game
September 13, 2021, 6:00 to 8:00 pm

Alignment is excited to be the featured charity for the Bear Family and Elgin Police Charity Softball Game rescheduled for September 13th from 6:00 to 8:00 pm at the Elgin Sports Complex.  Our partners, the Bear Family and the City of Elgin Police, will donate all proceeds from concessions and the 50/50 raffle to Alignment’s work in our schools and the community.

Your donation via our website of just $10 to the 50/50 Raffle benefits our earliest learners and our middle and high school students as they prepare for academic and career success. Raffle tickets will also be available at the event.

We look forward to seeing you!

StoryWalks Bring Books Outside in Elgin

StoryWalks
Lauryn Ellis, 3, of Elgin reacts to a page while taking a StoryWalk with her mom Felicia at Lords Park in Elgin on Thursday. The Elgin Partnership for Early Learning and Alignment Collaborative for Education have used a grant to make bilingual StoryWalks they can deploy around town. The StoryWalks are deconstructed picture books on signs and kids walk from one page to the next. One side of the sign is English and the other Spanish. (Rick West | Daily Herald Staff Photographer)

A new program in Elgin makes it possible for kids to enjoy the outdoors and read a book at the same time.

The Elgin Partnership for Early Learning (EPEL) and Alignment Collaborative for Education hosted their first StoryWalk on Thursday at Lords Park. The StoryWalk features a picture book broken down by pages and mounted on metal frames along a path. Kids walk from page to page to read the story. The book is offered in English on one side and Spanish on the other.

“The thing I like about a StoryWalk is that it’s an innovative way to explore literature and not just your regular book,” said Amber Peters, executive director of EPEL. “It gets you out in nature, which I think is important for kids because you learn through being outside and in the community.”

EPEL is a nonprofit organization working to ensure children have access to quality early care and education in Elgin and the surrounding neighborhoods. It partners with other area stakeholders to provide resources, early childhood initiatives, information, and support for families and providers for children under 5 years of age.

Four stories were chosen by the Gail Borden Public Library to use on the StoryWalks, each with about 18 pages. Peters said the library chose stories that were culturally and linguistically responsive and inclusive, while offering readers colorful pages to interact with while building critical kindergarten reading skills and boosting brain development.

Reaching young kids before they start their formal schooling is important, said Kathleen Cox, director of early learning for Elgin Area School District U-46. She also sits on EPEL’s board.

“Eighty-five percent of a child’s brain development happens before their fifth birthday, so the more work the school district does partnering with child care providers to get the same message out about language development and social skills, the stronger all of our kids are going to be when they come in to school.”

Copyright issues prevented EPEL from using reproductions of the pages, so they bought a couple of copies of each book and broke them down, laminated the pages and mounted them on boards that are inserted in the frames that can be stuck in the grass. The program is funded by a collaborative partner grant written to Making Kane County Fit for Kids, Kiwanis of Elgin, and Elgin Township.

The plan is to have story walks where their audience is already gathered, be it block parties, city events, or, like Thursday, near a Gail Borden story time at Lords Park Zoo. Peters said people can reserve the StoryWalk materials for family parties or school events. “They’re for the community to use,” she said.

Peters said StoryWalks is a perfect fit for EPEL’s “learning on the go” model.

“These movable story walks allow us to relocate them to different locations during the year,” she said. “Anywhere you go, there’s opportunity to learn. It’s just a matter of you engaging the child.”

By Rick West
Original story appeared in the Daily Herald 8/6/2021 5:08 PM


Welcome Alignment’s New Governing Board Members!

We are proud to announce the addition of four new members to our Governing Board.

Sheri Deshazo serves as president of Advocate Sherman Hospital.  Prior to her current role, Sheri was the Senior Vice President and Hospital Administrator for WakeMed in Raleigh, North Carolina.  She has over 30 years of experience in key leadership roles within the healthcare industry and continues to be an active supporter of community and economic development, as evidenced by her recent appointment to the Greater Elgin Area Chamber of Commerce Board and her previous service with the Raleigh Chamber of Commerce.

Eric Echevarria joined the City of Elgin Police Department in 1999 as a police officer and now serves as a Commander.  Prior to his service with the City of Elgin, Eric served as a member of the United States Marine Corps. He has a demonstrated history of government administration and support of non-profit organizations within the community, including his volunteer coordination with Alignment’s Explore events. In addition to being a staunch advocate for Elgin’s diverse community, he is also fluent in English and Spanish.

Karen Fox is an active community volunteer supporting numerous non-profit organizations within the Elgin community.  Prior to her retirement, Karen was a U-46 teacher for 17 years, culminating with a role leading family and community engagement. Karen’s volunteer service has encompassed supporting the Community Crisis Center, Gail Borden Public Library, United Way, along with assisting in leading critical community efforts, like the Census 2020 engagement. Karen and her husband Don were the recipients of the Jack Shales Spirit of Community Award in 2018.

Adam Hogan has served as the Vice President of Business Banking for Blackhawk Bank since 2019. Prior to joining Blackhawk Bank, he specialized for over seven years in commercial lending at St. Charles Bank & Trust. Adam is an active community volunteer with Cal’s Angels, and we all know him best as an Alignment volunteer for more than five years, offering his expertise to Alignment’s Educational Pathways A-Team and the annual EXPLORE event.

Elgin Backs Education Initiative as Economic Development Tool

Elgin approved a three-year $60,000 contract with the Alignment Collaborative for Education to continue with its efforts in early education awareness and providing career pathways for School District U-46 students.

The city was a founding member of Alignment Collaborative for Education, known as ACE, when it was created in 2015 to coordinate efforts among the 11 communities in School District U-46, business, and community leaders to promote early education, provide resources for students dealing with trauma, and create programs for career readiness.

The group’s focus has been in those three areas since its inception. It has become known for its partnerships with local business and programs to help U-46 students develop job skills, Executive Director Nancy Coleman said. However, the nonprofit has also been dealing with the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on students’ learning and mental health, she said.

Coleman doesn’t like the term “learning gap,” but U-46 is aware of the learning loss students have had in the last year due to the pandemic. There’s also an increase in trauma among students due to the coronavirus pandemic, she said. “Children are in an environment now that they are not used to, that they are not comfortable with, and we are seeing an increased effect of trauma in those children.”

Statistics show one out of four children in the district was dealing with trauma before the pandemic, district officials said. “I think that situation has escalated way beyond that, but we are doing what we can in the community,” Coleman said.

The collective has continued working on its goals throughout the pandemic and is doing some events surrounding career readiness like career panels with experts in different fields, industry workshops, internships, and an upcoming senior job fair.

“Our whole goal behind all of this work is to build Elgin’s future workforce,” Coleman said. “We don’t want that workforce leaving Elgin, so we want to be sure they know about the opportunities here.”

Councilman Toby Shaw appreciates the work the group is doing and the results it’s getting. But he feels it’s not the city’s role to fund U-46 programs.

“Yes, I believe in the mission. Yes, I understand what you are doing. It’s the right mission but just not the right funding source,” he said.

“When we started this, the goal was partly to help U-46, but it was really as an economic development tool,” Mayor Dave Kaptain said. “I can tell you personally by meeting with business leaders this has brought millions of dollars of investment back to the city of Elgin. The businesses that come here see the need for training and education for a workforce.”

“This is an economic development tool. It pays great dividends for us,” Kaptain said.

By GLORIA CASAS
MAR 30, 2021 AT 5:07 PM
ELGIN COURIER-NEWS

Original article: https://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/elgin-courier-news/ct-ecn-u46-contract-st-0330-20210330-jgvj4melvngczcbaycva526adm-story.html

Alignment Awarded Workforce Development Grant from Kiwanis

Alignment Awarded Workforce Development Grant from Kiwanis

Thank you to the Kiwanis Club of Elgin for your grant of $1,500 to support Alignment’s work-based learning initiatives in the high schools. This grant will specifically work to support U-46 seniors graduating in May to connect with employers regarding local employment opportunities.  

Seniors enrolled in such programs as U-46’s automotive, culinary arts, early education, engineering, nursing assistant, precision manufacturing, welding, etc., will receive assistance with resume development and interview skills along with a virtual job fair setting where they can speak with local companies about employment opportunities.  

We greatly appreciate our Kiwanis members and their assistance with preparing U-46 students to contribute to our local workforce!