Many of the people presenting storytime at DPL are brand new librarians or paraprofessionals who do not have experience in early literacy. There was no formal training schedule for new children’s services employees, and most were instructed to simply observe other high performing staff. Storytime was described as an early literacy workshop, but there were no specific expectations or descriptions that made it clear how storytime was more than “just reading to kids.”

An experienced group created the standards, assessment tool and a manual. The standards were presented to all children’s services staff. It was repeatedly stressed that 1) there is more than one way to do storytime, but at DPL we do it this way, and 2) most already meet the standards, but need to be intentional. Every storytime was observed over three months. About 15 staff attended an intensive three-part storytime training and were observed again.

After the first year of implementation, 98 percent of storytime presenters met the quality standards. Storytimes have truly become early literacy workshops, teaching the essential pre-reading skills and modeling practices for parents. Children’s services staff are well-versed in the principles of early literacy and use storytime as a starting point for additional parent education efforts and partnerships with other literacy organizations. Assessment and training are continuous and have expanded to include specifics on bilingual storytime.