DALTON, Ga. — What sounded more like a coach at halftime encouraging her team was actually Denise Pendley, principal of Southeast Whitfield High School, telling fellow educators, “If you’re not excited about what’s going on in Whitfield County Schools you’re in the wrong place.”

Pendley spoke during a Whitfield County Celebration of Literacy meeting recently at the high school.

Members of the Whitfield County District Literacy Team — educators from within the school system — discussed progress in each of their schools and a $563,558 Innovation Fund Grant awarded in December to the school system by the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement. The grant will fund a Beyond the Classroom initiative that will “serve over 1,500 children and parents throughout the year in learning academies, power lunches, summer literacy camps and other literacy events through partnerships with Dalton State College, the Northwest Georgia Healthcare Partnership and the Northwest Georgia Regional Library (System),” the school system said on its website.

Teachers will receive professional development instruction and “have access to resources to help transform their classrooms into language-rich environments.”

The priority is “birth to age 8 language and literacy development.”

To qualify for the grant, members of the literacy team focused on the “birth to (age) 8” literacy, which focuses on children having a “strong start” to reach their full potential throughout their early years, according to Michelle Caldwell, director of elementary school curriculum.

Caldwell said educators also had to collaborate with community partners. Those involved with the grant are Dalton State College, the Dalton-Whitfield County Public Library, the Northwest Georgia Healthcare Partnership and the Regional Educational Service Agency (RESA) for north Georgia.

“From there we followed the guidelines of the grant application,” Caldwell said. “We used multiple types of data to determine the need and identify schools that would benefit from the community literacy work.”

Judy Gilreath, superintendent of Whitfield County Schools, spoke at the meeting about the “journey of continuous improvement.”

“We spent a lot of time casting a common vision for our schools,” she said. “We all worked on ways to come together for our students.”

Gilreath said there are a lot of “good students” in the school system.

“I quickly realized as assistant principal (before becoming superintendent) each school had their own goals, agenda and professional development,” she said.

Gilreath said although there were good schools in the district at that time they were not working together.

“We have a lot of students who move from one school to the other,” she said. “It was important for us to cast a common vision.”

Gilreath said to improve literacy in Whitfield County educators couldn’t solely concentrate on teaching and reading.

“We had to look at the needs of the whole child,” she said. “We also realized very quickly we couldn’t reach goals alone.”

Gilreath referenced the book “Schools Cannot Do It Alone” by Jamie Vollmer.

“We learned students are in school for a short amount of time and during the day,” Gilreath said. “We had to do something to continue education in the summer. If they weren’t coming to us we had to go to them.”

Gilreath said the best time was during what are called “power lunches,” which are held at various summer feeding locations.

“During the summer, children were hungry so we teamed up with one of our community partners, Dalton State College,” she said. “The college students read while we fed them lunch, so not only are their little tummies fed, so are their minds.”

Tami Dodd, principal at Westside Elementary School, said the literacy team members have worked hard.

“They started having lots of good conversations, reading articles, researching and really focusing on the best practices,” she said. “What came out of that was our district leadership plans.”

“Whitfield County has always been supportive of professional learning,” she said.

Dodd said instructional coaches will deliver professional learning to teachers who will take it back to the classroom.

“That’s the coaching cycle we use and feel will be a good thing,” she said. “We’ve seen great results, we’re a long way from where we were five years ago.”

Caldwell said it’s important to bring resources to the schools because that’s where parents are willing to come.

“You guys make a difference, and we can’t do this work without your commitment to the cause,” she told the educators at the meeting.

Caldwell said educators “never give up.”

“We do the work for our kids and family,” she said. “It’s an honor to serve and work alongside all of you.”