Each One Teach One: No More Gap (EOTO) is a program designed from the ground up by Mary Ann Bash, a 40+ year veteran teacher of Denver Public Schools and strident advocate for the capacity of all children (and families) to learn and succeed. The program is designed to address three fundamental gaps that are known, from the research literature, to stifle the realization of the potential of these students: the language development and word learning gap, the parent/family education gap, and the parent engagement gap. These gaps, largely the result of structural vulnerabilities (Garcia-Reid, 2008), emerge early in life, persist in the form of ever-widening disadvantage over the course of students’ developmental years, and lock families into seemingly intractable cycles of poverty.

 

Many children struggle to succeed in school. Meaningful Differences, the seminal work of researchers Betty Hart and Todd Risley, gives some understanding of an underlying cause for their struggle. The research described in "The Early Catastrophe" demonstrates a 30 million-word gap by age 3! This huge language difference is between children who have a rich language environment at home and children who have more limited verbal interactions at home in their early years of language development.

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Regrettably, this Gap portends which children will be successful readers and writers in third grade and those who might be low achievers. Students who are behind in 3rd grade rarely catch up as they continue their schooling, so the need for intervention before and during school years is urgent.

 

The Hart and Risely research also shows that in rich language environments children receive significant more encouraging talk that promotes their self-confidence, curiosity and motivation to learn. By contrast, children in limited language environments receive more discouragement than encouragements.

 

Each One Teach One is committed to closing this Gap. Thousands of people have the vocabulary, the conversational skills and the encouraging talk to prepare students to be confident, curious, motivated and successful students. EOTO wants to leverage this to the fullest by getting parents, families, students and community volunteers involved through small-group instruction in the classroom and our Learning Gardens to rally for a different future.