Award & Grant Opportunities
2010 Toyota Family Literacy Teacher of the Year
Kay Brown
Karen Kay Brown has redefined the meaning of family. And as a result, she has increased its power exponentially. That’s why she is the 2010 Toyota Family Literacy Teacher of the Year.
This national honor builds on prior local and statewide recognition earned by Kay and the Union Parish Family Literacy Center. The Louisiana Department of Education designated the center in rural Bernice, La., as one of three outstanding English Language/Civics programs in the state in 2008.
Results earned in the last two years prove Kay’s teaching to be outstanding: 100 percent of the participants who set goals for diploma or GED, employment or postsecondary education have achieved the goals they set. The program participants also met 100 percent of the early childhood indicators for attendance, grade promotion, reading readiness and achievement as well as 100 percent of the parent education indicators for improvement in literacy behaviors.
Families are improving their lives because Kay and her staff are always on call. Communication lines are perpetually open, in case any of the 60 families in the program need them, including raising money for a mother to pay for the funeral for her 12-year-old son.
And her philosophy of expanding the family to reach the entire community is paying off.
The program became family to a destitute man with a 3-year-old niece who had nowhere else to turn. He came in one day because he heard the program could change his life and asked Kay to do just that. And she did in ways neither he — nor the entire community — could have imagined. He persevered in the family literacy program, received a perfect score in writing on his GED exam and is enrolled to become an RN. He still turns to the family literacy program for help with issues such as Pell Grant applications. Members of the community were so amazed at the transformation that many attended his graduation, at which he was the featured commencement speaker.
And the community has embraced and supported family literacy in other ways — from helping recruit families for the program to creating and managing a library for the center because the nearest library requires transportation that many families in the community do not have.
Toyota and the National Center for Family Literacy are pleased to recognize Karen Kay Brown as the 2010 Toyota Family Literacy Teacher of the Year.