Atlanta Speech School Expands Access to Teacher Training with $2.8 Million Grant from James M. Cox Foundation

ATLANTA, November 3, 2016 /3BL Media/ - The James M. Cox Foundation announced a $2.8 million grant to the Atlanta Speech School to expand access to the Cox Campus and provide more learning materials. By removing physical and financial barriers, the Cox Campus provides free, online access to professional development for teachers of children from birth to eight years of age.

Cobb County Pre-K Teacher Linda Tabeh stated, “I didn’t just watch the Cox Courses once. I was motivated when I saw how much positive change can happen with the kids. I kept going back to watch more and implement what I learned.”

Through the grant to the Speech School’s Rollins Center for Language and Literacy, the Cox Campus will launch two new courses later this month. One will help teachers of infants and toddlers understand brain science and the critical importance of the early learning years. The second will provide training on how to help teachers empower parents and other adults to become conversational partners with children from birth onward. This will enhance children’s “language nutrition” and set them up to be lifelong learners.

Lisa Hansel, director of Knowledge Matters and former editor of American Educator, states that the “Cox Campus is by far the best oral language training I have ever seen for early childhood educators.”

In advance of the new courses, the Speech School released the Every Opportunity video that highlights the impact teachers can have on a child’s ability to prosper. The video has been viewed more than 34 million times and is being used as a training tool for teachers across the nation. It has also triggered international interest from educators in Australia, Brazil and Romania, among others. It touts the importance of using every moment to promote rich language interactions, as well as social and emotional engagement.

“We’re excited by the success of the Cox Campus and the tools it is providing our teachers,” said Cox Enterprises Chairman Jim Kennedy. “As a company with operations across the nation, we see a tremendous opportunity to expand the scope of this training. We know it makes a difference for our teachers and children.”

The James M. Cox Foundation announced a $3.5 million grant to the Atlanta Speech School’s Rollins Center in 2014 to fund the development of the Cox Campus, making this valuable resource free and universally accessible to thousands of early childhood teachers in Georgia and beyond. The Cox Campus distills and disseminates insights and methods from the nation’s leading literacy experts.

The site also features video training modules from the Cox Pre-K classrooms at the Charles R. Drew Charter School, where the Rollins Center provides onsite coaching that serves as a research and design site for their training program.

Overall, the James M. Cox Foundation has invested nearly $15 million in early childhood education initiatives in Metro Atlanta.

About The James M. Cox Foundation

The James M. Cox Foundation is named in honor of Cox Enterprises' founder and provides funding for capital campaigns and special projects in communities where the company operates. James M. Cox was Ohio's first three-term governor and the 1920 Democratic nominee for president of the United States.

The Foundation concentrates its community support in several areas, including: conservation and environment; early childhood education; empowering families and individuals for success; and health.

About Atlanta Speech School

The Atlanta Speech School has evolved over its 78-year history into the nation's most comprehensive center for language and literacy -- earning a national reputation as the educational equivalent of a teaching hospital. The School has never turned away a child in need of services based on his or her family’s financial circumstances. The School attracts a staff of the most gifted and committed teaching professionals who apply the research of nation’s leading educational experts to achieve transformational language and literacy outcomes for children through its four school divisions, five clinical programs, and Rollins Center for Language & Literacy (“Rollins Center”) professional development program. The Rollins Center (begun through an endowed gift from the O. Wayne Rollins Foundation) provides training to for early childhood and early elementary teachers across Georgia and beyond.  Its 36-person staff synthesizes the nation’s leading research to deliver teacher training to statewide partners and educators to break the cycle of illiteracy and resulting poverty in which hundreds of thousands of families in Georgia -- and tens of millions across the United States-- are trapped.

The Rollins Center works in partnership with more than 100 public and private agencies and philanthropies to support Governor Deal’s 2020 goal that every child in Georgia will be on a path to read proficiently by the end of 3rd grade. To take its work to scale, through the support of The James M. Cox Foundation, the Woodruff Foundation, The Stranahan Foundation, and others, the Rollins Center has developed the Cox Campus (www.readrightfromthestart.org), a free, universally accessible interactive online community designed to provide a platform for translating its highly successful live model to an equally successful online format. Currently, over 13,000 teachers and others (including ones from all 50 states and other countries) are registered on the Campus.