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| May/June 2008 Issue
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 A PRIME TIME FAMILY READING TIME® partnership among the City of Thibodaux, the Thibodaux Rotary Club, and the Martha Sowell Utley Memorial Library proved to be a perfect vehicle to help approximately 60 children and parents in Thibodaux improve their reading and discussion skills. With its State appropriation, the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities (LEH) funds approximately 30 sites around the state each year. Consequently, collaborations such as this one are extremely important, allowing more Louisiana families to benefit from this humanities-based literacy program.
The genesis of the Thibodaux collaboration was with local attorney, author, bookstore owner, and Rotary President Woody Falgoust, who had heard about PRIME TIME from Olivia Pass, Associate Director of PRIME TIME. When Falgoust became Rotary President, he knew that he wanted literacy, which had recently been a national theme for Rotary, to be a major project for the local group. He invited Dr. Pass to present an overview of the PRIME TIME program at one of the Thibodaux Rotary Club’s weekly luncheons, and following that presentation, the Rotary members agreed that PRIME TIME should be one of their projects. Read this article.
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|  Paula Godfrey, Special Projects & Grant Services Coordinator for the Pinellas Public Library Cooperative, and PRIME TIME program co-coordinator at the Clearwater Main Library shares details of the last three weeks of this exemplary program with her team, State Project Coordinators, PRIME TIME staff, and our newsletter subscribers. This program is the first of eighteen NEH-funded sites to be implemented in 2008 and should give inspiration to upcoming programs.
Excerpt from PRIME TIME – WEEK 6
“We had a great final program including the distribution of reading medals to the kids from Clearwater’s Mayor, Frank Hibbard and Vice Mayor, John Doran, plus special guests, Barbara Pickell, Clearwater Library Director; Mary Brown, Pinellas Public Library Cooperative Executive Director; and Patricia Putman, Florida Humanities Council. This was a special moment for many of the families.”
Read this article.
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 The American Library Association (ALA) will host its 2008 annual conference in Anaheim, CA from July 26-July 2. A session entitledPRIME TIME FAMILY READING TIME: Bilingual Programs Expand Nationally will be presented on June 29th at 10:30 a.m. This session will host a panel comprised of Thomas Phelps, Director of Public Programs at the National Endowment for the Humanities, Lainie Castle, Project Director of Public Programs Office at the American Library Association, Anne Masters, Director of the Pioneer Library Systems in Norman, OK, and Pat Lawson-North, Executive Director of Vision Literacy-Santa Clara County Library in California. The panel will be moderated by Faye Flanagan, Director of PRIME TIME. Anyone attending the ALA conference is encouraged to make plans to attend this informative session.
View more ALA annual conference information.
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 With a focus on discovery through open-ended discussions, Dr. Helen Taylor, an LSU Shreveport professor and a PRIME TIME FAMILY READING TIME scholar, encouraged teachers to move toward a student-centered classroom during professional development activities held at the Sixth Grade Academy in Shreveport, LA on April 18. The entire faculty participated in the training that included an introduction to PRIME TIME components, goals, and methodology, which was presented by Faye Flanagan, PRIME TIME Director.
During the four-hour workshop Dr. Taylor introduced the faculty to the many ways that the PRIME TIME model can help them fulfill the Language Arts Grade Level Expectations and Benchmarks of the Louisiana Department of Education’s Comprehensive Curriculum. Using a chapter from the novel The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis, Dr. Taylor presented sample questions for classroom discussion and techniques for assessing student-learning outcomes.
The workshop also included a sample PRIME TIME reading and discussion session modeled by Dr. Taylor and Thelma Harrison, a PRIME TIME storyteller since 1997. The faculty members divided into pairs and prepared sample questions based on a PRIME TIME book. Three teams of teachers then volunteered to demonstrate their “talents” by sharing their PRIME TIME book and demonstrating discussion techniques that would encourage students to explore themes and values, rather than giving a required “correct” answer. Finally, all participants completed a lesson plan utilizing techniques demonstrated.
The workshop was supported by a grant from the Community Foundation of Shreveport-Bossier. Additionally, the grant will fund a PRIME TIME program at this campus in the fall of 2008. Twenty-five families will be given the opportunity to participate in this family literacy program for six weeks during September and October.
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 PRIME TIME FAMILY READING TIME® will host a training workshop on Saturday, July 26 - Sunday, July 27, 2008. The workshop will take place at the Louisiana Humanities Center at Turners’ Hall in New Orleans, LA. Approximately 60 individuals from California, Kansas, Nebraska, New York, and Louisiana are expected to take part in two days of intense practice and instruction on PRIME TIME methodology and program implementation. This promises to be an enlightening event as librarians, school administrators, teachers, university scholars, and storytellers learn to use the humanities to reduce illiteracy. For more information about the July 2008 PRIME TIME Training Workshop, contact Shantrell Adams at 504-620-2625 or adams@leh.org.
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 Each year the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities (LEH) honors Louisianans who have made outstanding contributions to the study and understanding of the humanities. In addition to the Humanist of the Year award, awards are given for Lifetime Contribution to the Humanities, Chair's Award for Institutional Support, Humanities Documentary Film of the Year, Individual Achievement in the Humanities, Public Humanities Programming, Humanities Book of the Year, and the Humanities Teacher of the Year award. This year’s event was held March 29th at the Houmas House Plantation and Gardens.
Twenty-five PRIME TIME sites hosting the award-winning family literacy program for the first time were recognized with a plaque. The Chair's Award for Institutional Support to The Community Foundation of Shreveport-Bossier for its contributions and partnership in LEH's PRIME TIME programs in the Shreveport-Bossier area. In addition, several PRIME TIME scholars were recognized with the Individual Achievement in the Humanities Awards, including Delma McLeod-Porter, a professor and coordinator of developmental writing at McNeese State University in Lake Charles and Jack Heflin, a professor of English at the University of Louisiana at Monroe. A special ceremony also recognized PRIME TIME scholar and the new Louisiana Poet Laureate, Darrell Bourque, a resident of rural St. Landry Parish, La., and professor emeritus of English from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. View more 2008 annual awards event details.
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 The Public Library Association (PLA) held their twelfth annual conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota, March 25-29. A session entitled Prime Time Family Reading: Hardwiring Alliances for Success was presented on Thursday, March 27 to an enthusiastic audience of approximately 65 librarians. The panel included Pat Leach, Youth Services Supervisor at the Lincoln City (Nebraska) public libraries; Karen McPheeters, Director of Farmington New Mexico Public Library; and Olivia Pass, Associate Director of PRIME TIME. Faye Flanagan, PRIME TIME Director, moderated the discussion and the dynamic presenters enlivened the session with anecdotes of participants’ experiences and reactions, while emphasizing measurable outcomes of the program. Fanny’s Dream by Carolyn Buehner was presented by Pass and Flanagan as an example of a PRIME TIME selection that can engage people of all ages in an open-ended discussion about the importance of dreams, a humanities theme in the Favorites Series. View sample PRIME TIME Syllabus for themes and corresponding title selections.
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