The staff at the Bussey Center for Early Childhood Education believe that a child is never too young to start on the road to reading.

"All children, whether toddler, infant or preschooler, are on a lifelong path to literacy," says Bailie Rosenthal, who directs the center in Southfield, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. "Bussey doesn't wait until children are reading before writing is stimulated, just as we don't delay reading to children until they are accomplished speakers. We recognize that the youngest of children respond to daily experiences with books, writing tools, role play and routines involving symbols."

Recognizing the essential connection between what a child learns in the early years and his or her success in school later on, the center focuses on developing fundamental skills. Literacy and language, from the written to the spoken word, are woven into everyday routines, said Rosenthal. The alphabet garden, built by Home Depot, helps children recall the letters of the alphabet. As a result of a partnership with a local science museum, indoor grow labs, a mealworm farm and a rock collection line the hallways to challenge children's brains to classify and label. Additionally, parents, students from the high school across the street, and staff from the Detroit Jewish Coalition for Literacy volunteer to read with children in the classroom.

Another partner, the Center for the Improvement of Early Reading Achievement (CIERA), operated in partnership by Michigan State University and the University of Michigan, is helping to guide reading instruction at Bussey. The center uses CIERA's emergent literacy practices through the "Kindergarten Literature Program," which provides a reading list of high-quality children's books and allots time each day for teachers to read with students and for students to read to their teachers.

Teacher Sue Simon explained that the early reading concepts that children glean through this process-such as understanding that a story has a beginning and ending, learning to read from left to right, and realizing that both words and pictures tell the story-prepare them to learn to read when they begin school.

For almost three decades, Bussey has been the only comprehensive early childhood center in the Southfield Public Schools. The center runs a gamut of programs from Head Start to adult education, priding itself for being a place where all Southfield's families and their preschool-age children are welcome.

As the source for one-third of the district's kindergarten enrollment, Bussey draws a lot of support from Southfield. Each year, Bussey reaches 450 children, from infants to age 6, having grown from its start in 1965 with 28 low-income 3- to 5-year-olds.

It has been Bussey's ability to fashion community programming for young children and their parents, regardless of ability or socioeconomic level, that has made it a model for neighboring school districts. As the community would change, so would Bussey. For instance, as families in the area were increasingly identified as non-native speakers, English as a second language (ESL) classes were developed to allow parents to learn alongside their children. In the early 1980s, when scores of women were joining the workforce, Bussey added extended child care.

Rosenthal said involving parents, in particular, has kept Bussey in tune with the needs of the community, especially one as economically and ethnically diverse as Southfield's, which has shifted considerably over the years. Once a rural township, Southfield unfolded into a suburb northwest of Detroit after the Second World War and now has a mostly African-American and foreign-born population.

Yet, Bussey has remained a constant variable for the community, which is evident in the second-generation children who attend Bussey. Sally Kashat, who went to Bussey as a child, now sends her two children to the center, where coincidentally her former teacher Sue Simon is teaching them. "It's an amazing place," said Kashat. "I recommend that place to everybody I know who has little kids-with disabilities, without disabilities, any children I know in the neighborhood or through friends."