“Ossining Basics” Expands Community Education Campaign

Two years after launching “Ossining Basics,” the Ossining School District’s early childhood education campaign continues to expand its reach in the community and promote strategies to prepare youngsters for success in school.

Ossining Basics encourages parents of children from birth to 3 to take specific actions that will stimulate language and cognitive development at home. The five principles are: maximize love and manage stress; talk, sing and point; count, group and compare; explore through movement and play; and read and discuss stories.

The group will be running a training for caregivers May 30 at the Ossining Public Library and will be at the annual Village Fair June 9.

Park School pre-kindergarten teachers Dianna Langdon and Natalie Ortiz, the Ossining Basics facilitators, said they see the results of parents’ work when children enter their classrooms at age 4. “The readiness piece that the Basics promotes is something that we work with all year long as pre-kindergarten teachers,” Ms. Langdon said.

The teachers have worked with the district to create new educational materials in English and Spanish and update the Basics website. Families are hungry for information, Ms. Langdon and Ms. Ortiz said.

Pamphlets and information sheets are available throughout the community, including at Open Door Family Medical Centers, the Ossining Police Department, the village offices, the Recreation and Parks Department and other locations. The group wants to saturate the town with information and visuals.

The “Ossining Basics for Caregivers” workshop takes place from 6-7:30 p.m. May 30 at the Ossining Public Library. It is open to anyone in the community who takes care of young children.

“The Basics is about how to bring the language of the Basics to things that you’re already doing at home,” Ms. Langdon said, such as looking for opportunities to count, group and compare at the supermarket.

Through Ossining Basics, the school district and community are committed to helping parents to move effective parenting strategies from knowledge to behavior, Superintendent Raymond Sanchez said.

“It is heartening how many organizations and agencies have embraced the campaign,” he said. “Our community is benefiting from their dedication to making sure children are ready to learn when they start school,” he said.

Ossining Basics, which will have a booth at Village Fair, is part of the A.C.T.I.O.N. committee (Acting Conscientiously to Ignite Opportunity Now). Ossining Basics, A.C.T.I.O.N. and the “Ossining Loves to Read” campaign will collaborate on a storytelling program at the event. A parent is creating a scavenger hunt.

Ossining Basics is modeled on the Boston Basics initiative, which was created in 2015 by Ronald Ferguson, faculty director of the Achievement Gap Initiative at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. Eighty percent of brain development takes place in the first three years of life, so it’s important to reach children at a very young age, according to Dr. Ferguson. Racial, ethnic and socioeconomic skill gaps are evident in national data by the time children are 2.

The Ossining Basics is a community-wide initiative, not just a school district effort, Ms. Ortiz said. “It’s really the collaboration with the community that makes it successful,” she said.