aMaze
Background and Purpose
aMaze, established in 2000, grew out of response to an incident in 1995 when eight-year-old Ellie received hate mail on her birthday deriding her because she has lesbian parents. Parents and faculty at Ellie's school launched an educational response aimed at educating students on the value of every family and establishing a learning community where every student and his/her family would be welcomed and valued. The result of their efforts resulted in a pilot of the Families All Matter Book Project (FAM).
The mission of aMaze is to "create a safe and respectful school community for children, parents, and staff by promoting the knowledge and skills needed to work together across differences of race, class, culture, gender, sexual orientation, religion/faith, and physical ability."
FAM is the core activity of aMaze and uses quality children's books to promote one theme: family is central to children's healthy identity development. During the course of the 12-week project elementary school children learn about the realities and experiences of many families through the use of 60 children's titles tied to different family diversity issues. Each story is complimented with activities and a dialog guide to help children engage in age-appropriate conversation about each book. aMaze serves 10,000 students in over 100 schools, churches and synagogues in Minnesota.
Current Request
During the past year aMaze launched an initial pilot of several topics for the preschool version of its popular Families All Matter curriculum. The preschool curriculum is age appropriate for children ages three through five and is intended for use in a range of early childhood settings including child care centers, family child care homes, preschools, and Early Childhood Family Education classes.
With the help of a paid consultant aMaze identified a cadre of books in each of the ten categories found in its elementary school curriculum (families are different, race and ethnicity, divorce and break-ups, lesbian and gay family members, socio-economics, immigration, adoption, disability, aging, and religious differences). The consultant, guided by an advisory task force, is identifying activities and lesson plans to accompany each title.
aMaze is requesting $70,000 over two years to hire a preschool coordinator to complete the curriculum (book selections, activities, and discussion guides), pilot the preschool curriculum in a variety of settings (early childhood family education, school readiness, family child care and a child care center), and revise the curriculum based on pilot participant feedback. During year two aMaze will launch a marketing effort and begin distribution of the preschool curriculum.