Baby Steps

Baby Steps

Baby Steps is designed to teach mostly low-income parents of pre-schoolers how to prepare their children for success in school and in life-- even if the parents themselves never experienced much success in school. Target clients are parents of children from birth to age 5. The program provides resources, training, books and instruction, including home visits during which appropriate intellectual and language development skills are modeled. Baby Steps does not work directly with children but endeavors to reach the children by engaging their parents through workshops, talk sessions, home visits and training seminars run by specialists in early-childhood education.

From the Founder

I believe that all parents, no matter how unsuccessful they might have been in school, want their children to succeed academically. I also believe that they can be taught how to make this possible.
That simple credo is at the heart of the program I have undertaken for the children of Okolona, Mississippi--my birthplace and still my psychic hometown. I call the program Baby Steps, for two reasons. First, it emphasizes the importance of an early start if we are to reverse the trend of educational failure, particularly among minority youth. It must begin with the little ones, the babies, while they are still full of possibilities and have not become associated with failure. Second, though, Baby Steps signals the possibility of longer, sturdier, more self-assured strides later on.

I believe we have the possibility of transforming our town by lifting up its children. And if I am right, there is every reason to believe our successful model can be replicated in communities across America.
But decades of journalism have taught me to be wary of grandiose save-the-world schemes. The important thing, I believe, is to get it right and make it work somewhere before trying to do it everywhere. That’s why we begin with Baby Steps.

Baby Steps

Baby Steps is designed to teach mostly low-income parents of pre-schoolers how to prepare their children for success in school and in life-- even if the parents themselves never experienced much success in school. Target clients are parents of children from birth to age 5. The program provides resources, training, books and instruction, including home visits during which appropriate intellectual and language development skills are modeled. Baby Steps does not work directly with children but endeavors to reach the children by engaging their parents through workshops, talk sessions, home visits and training seminars run by specialists in early-childhood education.

From the Founder

I believe that all parents, no matter how unsuccessful they might have been in school, want their children to succeed academically. I also believe that they can be taught how to make this possible.
That simple credo is at the heart of the program I have undertaken for the children of Okolona, Mississippi--my birthplace and still my psychic hometown. I call the program Baby Steps, for two reasons. First, it emphasizes the importance of an early start if we are to reverse the trend of educational failure, particularly among minority youth. It must begin with the little ones, the babies, while they are still full of possibilities and have not become associated with failure. Second, though, Baby Steps signals the possibility of longer, sturdier, more self-assured strides later on.

I believe we have the possibility of transforming our town by lifting up its children. And if I am right, there is every reason to believe our successful model can be replicated in communities across America.
But decades of journalism have taught me to be wary of grandiose save-the-world schemes. The important thing, I believe, is to get it right and make it work somewhere before trying to do it everywhere. That’s why we begin with Baby Steps.