Need
Reading and literacy are in crisis in New Orleans. Prior to Hurricane Katrina, 70% of the city’s adult population was reading below an 8th grade level, according to the National Literacy Institute. The storm destroyed 110 of 126 New Orleans public schools, tipping a bad literacy environment into catastrophe. Many children’s personal book collections were also destroyed, as 80% of the city flooded.
Solution
New Orleans children must be re-connected with books and love of learning. An award-winning veteran teacher has developed the Big Chief and Big Queen Book Project, a highly innovative pilot at a downtown elementary school. The project builds on the appeal of the Mardi Gras Indians, who are much-beloved culture heroes, to engage children in reading, history and indigenous studies.
Project
At strategic times throughout the school year, Mardi Gras Indian leaders appear at lunchtime celebrations. They lead the children in parading with traditional music, and each Big Chief or Big Queen presents each child with a gift-wrapped hardcover book. The books are chosen in consultation with teachers and librarians to assure appeal to young readers as well as relevance to the LA Comprehensive Curriculum.
Legs
Prior to these celebratory events, classroom work emphasizes reading, rhetoric and African- American history and culture, in which the Mardi Gras Indians play significant roles. The children research and draft oral presentations that they will give to the Big Chiefs and Big Queens. Post-event follow-up reinforces literacy via book discussions and letter-writing to the Indians.
School
McDonogh 42 is an elementary charter school opened this year by the Recovery School District in Treme, adjacent to the French Quarter and one of New Orleans’s most historic African-American neighborhoods. The students are from low to moderate income households: some have had no schooling since Katrina. The principal and most of the faculty are veteran teachers dedicated to academic success for their students.
Indians
The Mardi Gras Indians are culture heroes in New Orleans, carrying forward complex African and Afro-Caribbean traditions of costuming, masquerading and music. If you ever heard the Grateful Dead (or long before them, the Dixie Cups) play “Iko Iko,” you know something about Indian music. The involvement of Big Chiefs and Big Queens gives New Orleans children a persuasive endorsement for reading and literacy.
Director
Project Director Cherice Harrison-Nelson has taught in New Orleans elementary schools for over thirty years. She was profiled on PBS and has received many teaching awards and academic honors, including a Fulbright Scholarship. Cherice is also Curator of the Mardi Gras Indian Hall of Fame and a Big Queen of the Guardians of the Flame. She has taught at Tulane University and lectured about Indian culture throughout the world.
Support
The project receives support from the Andrew Cader Foundation, Basin St. Station, E D and F Man Fund, Foundation for the MidSouth, Guardians Institute, HarperCollins, Interfaith Works, Jonathan Demme, New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, New Orleans Musicians’ Clinic, Penguin Young Readers Group, Points of Light Foundation, ReNew Our Music Fund, Tipitina’s Foundation and many tribes of Mardi Gras Indians. Fiscal agency is provided by the National Performance Network, and contributions are tax-deductible.
Books
Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See? (Kindergarten)
By Bill Martin, Jr. Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
What a Wonderful World (Kindergarten)
By George David Weiss and Bob Thiele. Publisher: Atheneum.
Peter’s Chair (1st Grade)
By Jack Ezra Keats. Publisher: Viking.
Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters (2nd Grade)
By John Steptoe. Publisher: HarperCollins.
Ella Fitzgerald (3rd Grade)
By Andrea Pinkney. Publisher: Hyperion Books for Children.
The Friendship (4th Grade)
By Mildred Taylor. Publisher: Dial.
Bud, Not Buddy (5th Grade)
By Christopher Curtis. Publisher: Bantam Doubleday Dell Books for Young Readers.
Porch Lies: Tales of Slicksters, Tricksters and Other Wily Characters (6th, 7th Grades)
By Patricia McKissack and Andre Carrilho. Publisher: Random House.
To Be a Slave (8th Grade)
By Julius Lester and Tom Feelings. Publisher: Penguin USA.
Special thanks to the Guardian Institute, HarperCollins, Interfaith Works, and the Penguin Young Readers Group for their book donations.