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New Mexico Supporting Partnerships to Assure Ready Kids (NM SPARK)

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There is a critical connection between educational achievement and seamless transitions for children as they move from pre-school programs through kindergarten into elementary school. NMCF’s NM SPARK – Supporting Partnerships to Assure Ready Kids – fosters family engagement, early childhood and elementary school collaboration and best practices.

NM SPARK is an initiative of the New Mexico Community Foundation with funding from our partner foundations, including the W.K. Kellogg Foundation (for an overview of SPARK click Kellogg SPARK Overview, the Daniels Fund, the McCune Charitable Foundation, the J.F Maddox Foundation, the Brindle Foundation and the Thornburg Charitable Foundation, and from our individual donor partners.

NM SPARK works with…

  • families to ensure a seamless transition for children 3-6 years of age as they move from pre-school programs through kindergarten into elementary school classrooms
  • child development and early education providers in six community areas around Albuquerque, Laguna Pueblo, Hobbs, Farmington, Española, and Las Cruces
  • local child development and elementary teachers as well as with parents, local health care providers, and businesses in these communities.

NM SPARK is part of an innovative national SPARK collaborative supported and promoted by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. Other SPARK sites include Washington DC, Georgia, North Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Ohio and Hawaii.

SPARK is based on four key principles:

  1. Strong partnerships among families, providers, community organizations and ready schools ensure that all children can learn and succeed in school.
  2. Quality is a critical element of a child’s early learning, from birth through the early years of school.
  3. Parents and families at home and working with early-care providers are critical to ensuring that children succeed in school.
  4. School leaders and teachers, working with the community’s support, can create smooth transitions from early-learning settings so that children can succeed in school.

Laguna Pueblo

Learn about NMCF’s work with Laguna Pueblo.

Other ways in which the New Mexico Community Foundation through the NM SPARK Initiative creates impact is through its support of…

The JOINING HANDS Approach, Strategies for Successful Transitions which prepares schools, families and children to make positive transitions to school in early childhood- a period known to have a major impact on achievement and success throughout a student’s school career and lifetime.

Initially developed and piloted over a decade ago by the New Mexico Comprehensive Head Start/K-3 Transition Project through the New Mexico Children Youth and Families Department (Barbara Loveless, Mary Rankin, Olivia rivera and Ann Sullivan among others) and ACF, Head Start Bureau…Joining Hands finds better ways to communicate and connect in order to ensure children make a low-stress, high-success transition from preschool to kindergarten and elementary school.

The Recorder – the NM Coalition of School Administrators Newsletter featured Joining Hands in their November 2008 newsletter – read the article here (480K, .pdf).

T.E.A.C.H. (Teacher Education And Compensation Helps) Early Childhood NEW MEXICO, a project of the New Mexico Association for the Education of Young Children

> Download the 2008 Annual Report on T.E.A.C.H. Early Childhood NM (5.4MB, .pdf)

T.E.A.C.H. NM plays a vital role in improving the quality of early care and education for New Mexico’s youngest children.   The first years of life are when young people’s brains are growing fastest.   Patterns of social and emotional life and learning created during these early years last a lifetime.  Children deserve our best teachers and caregivers yet most early childhood teachers in New Mexico have not had the opportunity to study child development and early learning formally.  Most are paid low wages.   T.E.A.C.H. NM helps give them the opportunity to attend college and provides scholarship support and financial incentives to make it possible.   T.E.A.C.H. works with NM SPARK, the AIM HIGH program, the STARS quality rating system, NM PreK, and other statewide efforts to boost overall quality of care and education for New Mexico’s most vulnerable children.

The NM SPARK Initiative of the New Mexico Community Foundation provided a big boost to help T.E.A.C.H. NEW MEXICO grow in its first years.   This support, continuing to the present, has been invaluable in making T.E.A.C.H. NM possible along with the NM Children, Youth and Families Department.  T.E.A.C.H. NM represents an important part of the commitment by the New Mexico Community Foundation and by state public officials to improve the quality of early care and education across all settings and in all corners of New Mexico.   For more information on T.E.A.C.H. NM contact (505) 242-7310.

Project FLECHA (Family Leadership for Education, Culture and Healthcare Access) is implemented at NM SPARK sites as one of the parent engagement strategies on the path to nurture Learning Advocates.

A Learning Advocate is “a parent, or other guardian, who is a voice for the child until the child can voice for him/herself.  A Learning Advocate seeks answers about their child’s learning and education, seeks resources to meet the child’s unique needs and interests, helps move the child forward by knowing, listening to and supporting the child.  A Learning Advocate respects, cares for, and nurtures the child through an intentional process that builds upon the child’s strengths.”

Developed with the knowledge that families themselves make the biggest difference for their children’s success.   PROJECT FLECHA emphasizes the use of a family’s cultural strengths to support children’s journey through early education and the school years.

PROJECT FLECHA training curriculum was developed locally, specifically for New Mexico parents with young children by Louise Kahn, RN, MSN, CPNP.  PROJECT FLECHA and the FLECHA Curriculum has been supported, funded, and incubated by the New Mexico Community Foundation and NM SPARK.  Additionally, PROJECT FLECHA is based on work funded through the RWJ Executive Nurse Fellows Program, a national program supported by The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and The Center for the Health Professions, University of California, San Francisco.

For more information on NM SPARK, JOINING HANDS and PROJECT FLECHA, contact Emily Darnell-Nunez, NM SPARK Statewide Coordinator at the New Mexico Community Foundation (505) 821-6735.

NM SPARK Newsletters and Resource Documents

Click W.K. Kellogg SPARK Overview to view resources and other sites.