Get Ready to Read! News from the Field 
October/November 2007

Jean Ciborowski Fahey, Ph.D. is the education director of the Reading Partnership at South Shore Hospital in Weymouth, Massachusetts. Dr. Fahey also developed and produced the "Raising Readers" early literacy video now available on the GRTR! Web site. In this month's News from the Field, Dr. Fahey recounts how she became involved with hospital-based early literacy programs and how she incorporates the GRTR! screening tool and resources into her program.

After many years of being accountable for testing children and adolescents with reading and other learning problems at a Harvard teaching hospital and child-development clinic, Dr. Fahey's professional interests began to shift from assessing reading and learning problems to preventing them.

Dr. Fahey was spurred on by the exciting breakthrough research in early brain development that promoted "building stronger muscles" for getting young children ready to learn to read. She saw that working with children early on was "no longer just a good idea. The science told us why [starting early] made a difference, and indeed, a profound difference for some children," Dr. Fahey says. Knowing this, Dr. Fahey realized the perfect place to reach children early would be at their birth place, the local hospital.

In 2000, working with Dr. Mike McManus, the executive director of pediatrics, the team proposed using South Shore Hospital (a regional birthing center in southeastern Massachusetts with 3,900 births annually) as an 'engine' to promote literacy with parents-to-be, child care providers and early childhood educators. Subsequently, South Shore Hospital in Weymouth, Massachusetts instituted the Reading Partnership, a program to promote literacy beginning at birth, as one way to address the persistently high number of children who fall behind in reading and never catch up.

There are two core messages in the science-based training and parent education the Reading Partnership provides in its signature class, "The Journey Toward Literacy Begins at Birth:" love, conversations, reading and rhymes; and using the Get Ready to Read! screening in pre-kindergarten. In the last seven years, the team has trained thousands of parents, teachers and day care providers in the use of the GRTR! screening tool. The Reading Partnership has:

• Brought parents and children together in hospital computer training labs and assisted parents in screening their children on the computers;

• Given groups of physicians a close look at the on-line screening tool;

• Collaborated with the Massachusetts Family Literacy Consortium at the Massachusetts Department of Education, to demonstrate the tool and accompanying activities at major state public health, mental health, Head Start, Early Intervention, and education conferences;

• Shared the screening tool with Adult Basic Education teachers who have classes filled with parents learning English, obtaining their GED and their citizenship; and

• Shared the screening tool in libraries and preschools as well as with employees and parents in their work places.

Inspired by the success of the Get Ready to Read! screening tool and its accompanying activities, Dr. Fahey’s work is expanding to reach even more people in the community. Developing early literacy videos like “Raising Readers” and conducting outreach in the field are two ways Dr. Fahey has built on the work she has been doing at South Shore Hospital. Looking ahead, Dr. Fahey is focused on raising additional funding for her work in the hopes of taking her project and resources “on the road” in order to reach more children and families.

Please click here to view the "Raising Readers" early literacy video.

Jean Ciborowski Fahey, Ph.D. can be reached at or (781) 340-4331.