Communities In Schools of Chatham County

For 25 years bringing Chatham County Together!

Archives for March 2018

“The best thing a kid can tell you is, ‘I don’t need you anymore!’”

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Steve Townsend became connected to CISCC almost 10 years ago when it was Chatham County Together! Prior to his retirement and coming to NC, Steve lived in Houston, Texas and worked in the Oil and Gas Industry. While in Houston, he felt a calling to mentor kids at risk—students identified as “on the brink of success”— and joined an initiative similar to CISCC’s “Lunch Buddies” Program.” When he moved to Chatham County, he discovered the mentoring program run by Chatham County Together! Steve first assisted with a Graduation Project and soon after became a mentor to a boy in the second grade. This boy is now in High School and is consistently doing well. Steve’s approach then—as it is now—is “M&M” (Math and Mentoring).Fueled by his passion for education and his desire to help those kids who need extra support to succeed, he encourages his students to believe in themselves as they build their confidence in math. Steve has helped with summer math “catch-up” programs and is always looking for more ways to contribute individually. This year, Steve began tutoring multiple students at Chatham Middle School during weekly intervention time. Steve maintains high standards, expecting students to strive for 100% on their assignments. He never gives up on students and does not let them give up on themselves. Steve says, “My goal is to bring them to the point of feeling confident enough in math that they don’t need me anymore.” And when asked what the most rewarding aspect of volunteering is, Steve doesn’t hesitate; “to have the opportunity to help these kids.”

“I Feel Privileged to be a Part of It”

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Johnny Davis is a Jack-of-all-trades and master of all! He was first recruited to serve on the CISCC Board of Directors and currently serves as the 2017-18 fiscal year board Treasurer. Johnny also is a mentor, facilitator for the Cooking Matters classes, volunteers with the Youth Garden and volunteered for Challenge Day at Chatham Middle School in the fall of 2016. And he does it all with a smile! Johnny found Challenge Day to be a phenomenal experience in terms of how it was able to get adults and kids to think about life, why they do the things they do, and the consequences for their actions. For the Cooking Matters classes, the Inter-Faith Food Shuttle in Raleigh provides the food, the curriculum and the structure. Johnny drives his truck every week to Raleigh to “shop” for the food the class needs. Participants take leftover food home and put their new culinary skills to work right away! Johnny thinks it’s cool to watch kids sometimes look at food they think they don’t like, but have different ideas at the end of class. For the CIS Youth Garden, Johnny recently installed the complicated irrigation system that is connected with a cistern, harvesting water from the roof of a nearby building. By far the most rewarding aspect of volunteering with CISCC, though, is Johnny’s relationship with his mentee, Fernando. During the school year, Johnny and Fernando meet twice weekly for shorter blocks of time to focus on homework and physical activity. In the summertime, however, they often spend entire days together. One time Johnny flew Fernando and his cousin to the beach for the day, and they all had a blast! Johnny keeps a journal of everything he and Fernando have done together. How meaningful it will be for both Fernando and Johnny to look back on years from now to reflect on their shared experiences. Johnny understands the essential pieces of our nonprofit puzzle—both on-stage and behind the scenes—and he is gifted in how he communicates these pieces to the various stakeholders. Johnny says, “Everybody here is focused on the kids, and I feel privileged to be a part of it.”

“Relationship Before the Task”

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Erika Guy’s entrée into CISCC came by way of “Challenge Day” held at Chatham Middle School (CMS) in Siler City in October of 2016. The Challenge Day school program provides teens and adults with tools to break down the walls of separation and isolation, replacing them with compassion, acceptance, and respect. Retired after having worked in several states and cities as a professional counselor, advisor, and advocate for school children in grades 7-12, Erika has been involved with and exposed to hundreds of private programs and groups helping children. She says that Challenge Day accomplished more in a six-hour time frame than anything she’s been a part of. After one day, Erika was hooked and wanted to keep up the momentum with the middle-schoolers by helping to harvest the seeds that had just been planted. Since the fall of 2016, Erika has spent her Thursdays at CMS leading three grade-level intervention groups, serving a total of twenty students. She also helped launch the first “Cooking Matters for Teens” program at CMS and is now coordinating the third class. Erika has partnered with CMS counselor Abby Bishop to lead a bullying prevention and self-help hotline workshop to the entire student population and faculty. Recently, Erika facilitated a ‘ Working with Youth and Grief’ seminar for CISCC mentors. Erika can’t imagine a life without kids, and because of that she feels like she’s “never had a job.” Her work as a “kid advocate” and “teacher always” is an extension of who she is. And, she always puts the “relationship before the task,” because in her experience working with children, “until they know how much you care, they couldn’t care less how much you know.”

What A Difference One Person Can Make

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 On a cold January morning in 2015, in the middle of the school year, a school bus pulled up to the America’s Best Inn motel in Siler City. It was the first day of school for Kaylin, a new sixth grader at Chatham Middle School whose family had just arrived in town. Neither of Kaylin’s parents had jobs. Her father, an Army veteran who had served in Iraq, Afghanistan and Korea, suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, and the family was homeless, living in the motel, with the Veterans Administration picking up their tab for the first three weeks.
 The latest in a string of dislocating moves by the military family during her short life had left the 13-year-old feeling self-conscious and isolated. “It was kind of hard,” says Kaylin, now 14 and an eighth-grader at Chatham Middle who lives with her family in a trailer park. “I didn’t know anybody.” Then she met Tych Cowdin, the Student Support Specialist in the school for Communities In Schools of Chatham County and the middle school winner of this year’s annual Impact Award from Communities In Schools of North Carolina.
When asked what difference he has made in her life in the nearly three years they have known one another, Kaylin pauses for a long moment, then apologizes for what she says may sound like a trite comment, “He’s like a savior,” she says.
Cowdin says that when Kaylin first enrolled at Chatham Middle she “had decent grades, but she had a lack of extracurricular or enrichment opportunities. “She was siloed in Siler City because of poverty,” he says. “There were a lot of opportunities for her to break down and give up over the last two years.”
A Plan for Kaylin
Cowdin, a member of the leadership team at the school, created a plan to provide Kaylin with support in and outside school. He signed her up to receive a food bag every Friday with meals for the weekend. He enrolled her in a program to learn about cooking and nutrition. He tutored her two afternoons a week after school. Cowdin also arranged for Kaylin to volunteer in a one-day town beautification project that would connect her to other kids. Last year, he enrolled her in a program to learn about careers and also in a one-week overnight camp.
Kaylin, who already was a good student, has earned all A’s and B’s in her classes. This fall, she played in the outfield on the school’s softball team — her first experience with a team sport — and was voted the most improved player. She wrote a poem about the experience, with a degree of detail that Cowdin — who played football and baseball in college — says he himself never could have put into words. “She’s an amazing student,” says Cowdin, who in 2014 piloted the Communities In Schools program in Chatham Middle. “She’s really developed some goals and some purpose despite every possible obstacle you could think of for a middle-school girl.
Social-Emotional Learning
The support Cowdin has provided for Kaylin is precisely what Communities In Schools is all about, says Kim Caraganis, Executive Director of Communities In Schools of Chatham County. Communities In Schools focuses on “having a caring adult, in addition to a parent, someone outside the family that can open windows for a young person they may not have access to, that can give this young person a vision of what they can be, where they can go, what are the possibilities,” she says.
As the student support specialist at Chatham Middle, Cowdin serves as case manager for 56 students, or 10 percent of the student population. Based on their individual needs, he typically meets at least every week or two with each student assigned to him, and sometimes as often as once or more a day. He develops a plan and goals for each student. And as needed, he finds community partners to provide services to address the needs of the student or family. “It really boils down to a lot of mentoring,” Cowdin says. “Kids often don’t have anybody they can view as a role model or somebody to talk with or look up to — somebody there at school they can have a relationship with.”
Caraganis agrees. “Kids need to be seen and given positive messages, given encouragement,” she says. “It affirms that you’re valued. It gives you connection.” Many children face hurdles outside school ranging from stress to trauma that can hurt their academic performance, she says. “When you have someone who is kind and encouraging,” she says, “it just opens you up again in a way that allows you to remove some of the barriers.”
In October, Cowdin helped Kaylin’s older sister, who had dropped out of 10th grade, enroll in a literacy program leading to a general equivalency diploma, or GED. He also has helped Kaylin’s mother, who has just started a job working in a chicken plant, enroll in a program volunteering in the community. “He went above and beyond everything,” says Tammy, Kaylin’s mom. “Kaylin has excelled physically, mentally, emotionally because of him.”
Community Connections
In addition to his work with individual students, Cowdin coordinates roughly a dozen school-wide programs that serve about 100 students and 50 families in partnership with 10 community agencies. He also coordinates six small groups of four to 10 students each that meet with social workers, guidance counselors, volunteers and other service providers on issues ranging from mental health to chronic stress. “His impact on the school has been just monumental,” says Chad Morgan, who joined Chatham Middle School as principal in 2014 at the same time Cowdin became the school’s student support specialist for Communities In Schools. “My goal was to focus on community involvement in the school because there was none,” Morgan says.
At the school, 75 percent of students are Hispanic, 15 percent are black, and over 88 percent are eligible for lunch that is free or at a reduced price. Over the past three years, Morgan says, the percentage of students performing at grade level has grown to 48 percent from 25 percent. Cowdin has been “instrumental in reaching out to the community at large and telling our story, letting them know areas where we need support, finding people with the same vision and goal, and helping them support not only our students but our families,” Morgan says. “He’s my right hand when it comes to making those community connections and building those community partners,” he says.
Cowdin also has had a big impact on Kaylin, Morgan says. “There are a lot of struggles in her life that are non-academic,” he says. “Without his support and making those connections, she probably would have fallen through the cracks.”
Kaylin says Cowdin has been her inspiration. After high school and college, where she may study marine biology, she says, she wants to be either a counselor or physician. “I kind of want to do things like Mr. Tych,” she says, “helping people.”
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