Makepeace Literacy Leadership Center Funding Reaps Great Rewards

CARVER, MA – With a grant from the A.D. Makepeace Company, Carver Public Schools and HILL for Literacy formed a partnership to provide professional development and support for literacy education for schools in southeastern Massachusetts. The center, located in Carver MA, is used daily for a variety of literacy training and sharing activities. Since its inception, the center has trained over 2,000 teachers from more than 55 districts.

“When I conceived of the idea of a regional model for dissemination of best practices in literacy, I wrote a grant. They really only give small seed money grants, but they believed in me, and believed in the results we were getting,” said Liz Sorrell, superintendent of Carver Public Schools on the generosity of A.D. Makepeace Company’s funding.

The dynamic physical space for teachers and literacy professionals to learn and grow is a huge improvement over past resources. “When we provided professional development here eight years ago, we were stuffed into a very small library with small children chairs. It was the vision of the superintendent here in Carver to create what is now the Makepeace Center. It’s just a much more professional look and feel, and teachers deserve that,” said Eleni Steadman, a HILL for Literacy facilitator who presents workshops and trainings at the Makepeace Literacy Leadership Center.

One of the keys to the center’s success is its longtime partnership with HILL for Literacy in providing professional development for teachers in the southeastern Massachusetts region.

Said Hogan, “One of the things we were excited about is that they weren’t trying to do this on their own. They found a recognized leader in the HILL who could do this education, who had had success, was driven by data, and had done it in communities and districts that had much greater needs than the districts around here, and had been successful at it.”

The A.D. Makepeace Company is the world’s largest cranberry grower, the largest private property owner in eastern Massachusetts, and a recognized leader in environmentally responsible real estate development and stewardship. The company created the Makepeace Neighborhood Fund in 2005 as a way to provide targeted financial support and technical assistance for projects that benefit the residents of the four communities in which the company owns property: Wareham, Carver, Plymouth, and Rochester.

The HILL develops and deploys sustainable literacy programs in the nation’s schools. Its vision is to help all U.S. schools teach language and literacy effectively. Its mission is to guide educators at all levels through the process of creating schools which excel in language and literacy fluency. The HILL starts at the top and builds leadership teams, recommends curriculum, trains teachers and reading personnel, introduces evaluation methodologies, and provides support throughout the process to ensure success.