Communities In Schools of Chatham County

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“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.”

Mentoring Works!

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January is National Mentoring Month, and Communities In Schools of Chatham County (CIS CC) is celebrating the positive impacts of youth mentoring as well as recruiting more caring adults to make a difference in our young people’s lives. Mentoring provides guidance, encouragement, and support to help youth succeed in school, at work, and in life.

 

CIS CC Mentoring works! Last year, 55 youth were served through the Mentoring Program. 86% of the mentees met or exceeded the average daily school attendance rate. 86% of matched youth met their behavioral and/or academic goals. However, there is still a need for one-on-one mentors in Chatham County. CIS CC currently has 44 mentoring matches and 33 youth on the waiting list. Are you interested in becoming a mentor or do you know someone who might be? The power of mentoring is best illustrated by those who have been impacted first-hand.

 

Current mentors say that their lives have been impacted positively by their mentees. Elizabeth Fridley shares that she and her mentee “have learned and taught each other so much by sharing our experiences and perspectives. My relationship with Jade has taught me to be present and fully engaged.” Garry Sronce says, “It’s all so rich. Skipping rocks on flat water with a kid who has never done that before is simply a wonderful experience. And we can’t wait to do it again!” CIS CC celebrates our dedicated mentors and knows they will continue to be impacted positively in a variety of expected and unexpected ways.

 

What is the impact of mentoring with CIS CC according to the parents and family members of the youth served? Savannah and Mason are siblings who both attend 3rd grade at an elementary school in Chatham County. Matched since March 2017, Sue McMaster and Savannah do lots of things together: They read, shop, cook, hike, watch movies and eat popcorn, and Savannah is almost always very well behaved. Jane Gallagher and Mason (also matched since March 2017) spend time together, mostly outside being active. Jane was athletic as a child, and sees her younger self in the boy with boundless energy. Watching Mason run full-speed, barefoot, with not a care in the world—that, according to Jane, is what freedom really is.

Sheila is a non-parent family member living with Savannah and Mason, and she says mentoring has been very positive for both children. Sheila sees how Mason tries to use what Jane has taught him. He is much better at using his words when he is angry. And when he has so much energy he needs to release, he goes outside and runs around the house a couple of times as Jane has suggested. Although it’s a long journey, Sheila has seen a big difference. Both children’s grades have improved; Savannah recently made A/B Honor Roll and Mason missed it by just one point. Sheila has seen improvements in the home too. “It gets wild in here,” she said, “but it’s great that they have someone to spend time with and to take them places. They do all kinds of things.”

Karen is the mother of now 22-year old twin boys, Kenton and Kendrick. Both were mentored from when they were in 3rd grade until they finished high school. Kenton currently is an assistant manager at Food Lion in Siler City. Kendrick is a senior in college at East Carolina University. Both men still keep up with the mentors they grew to love as boys. Karen said that once the relationships were established, “no one wanted to let go.” Karen was diagnosed with MS when her boys were young, and she is especially grateful for the time the mentors spent with her sons. She never had to worry when her sons were with them. She knew they were well taken care of. The twins were and are very different, their mother said, and it was very good they had separate mentors. Each of them felt that they were important and mattered as individuals.

Perhaps the greatest gauge of the program’s impact is from what the mentees say themselves. I had a chance to speak with Savannah and Mason about their experiences with their mentors. Mason said Jane was “nice” and that she “gives you choices.” He said that by having a mentor he gets to “do more things like go hiking in the woods and look for neat stuff.” Savannah could hardly contain her excitement when telling me all the things Sue has taught her and done with her.  “She teaches me lots! She taught me how to bake cookies and how to crochet, and she took me to the movies and to the Nutcracker Ballet!” Savannah added that when she does well, Sue rewards her with fun things to do. One of her favorite things about having a mentor is when Sue comes and eats lunch with her. It makes her feel really, really good.

 

Mentors with CIS CC are trained, screened, and supervised by our experienced Mentoring Program Manager, Shirille Lee. One mentor says, “You don’t really have to know what you’re doing in the beginning—you have so much support from Shirille. If you come to Shirille with a problem or concern, she laughs and lightens things up. It’s like Shirille is mentoring the mentors.” You can make a difference in the life of a child too! For more information, contact Shirille Lee, Program Manager, Mentoring Program, at: (919) 663-0116 x 404; shirille@cischatham.org

https://cischatham.org/programs/community-based-programs/mentoring/

 

Leading by Example-

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Josilyn is a warm, smart, friendly 5thgrader who attends Virginia Cross Elementary School in Siler City. Susan Collins Thompson is a creative, resourceful retired educator. Josilyn and Susan are friends as part of CIS-Chatham County’s (CIS-CC) Mentoring Program. Matched in late February, 2017, the pair meets regularly to have lunch together, work on school work, and attend monthly movies at Wren Memorial Library in Siler City.

The weekly Monday lunches are special, whereby Susan lays out colorful cloth placemats and napkins, setting a positive space and tone for the week. A couple of Josilyn’s classmates always join the pair, and they talk about current successes and challenges. Susan encourages the students to be well-behaved and to make good choices in and out of school.

These mentoring activities happen like clockwork, Susan said, and it’s evident that Josilyn responds well to the consistency. “I know what’s coming up. I know what we’re doing. I can count on Susan. She is super-fun, really nice, and really generous.” Josilyn’s father, a single dad, is thankful for the CIS-CC mentoring program that connects both of his children with positive adults.

Susan also introduces Josilyn to service-learning experiences and has led by example how to become involved in the community. “We go to a lot of places,” Josilyn said. “She helps me get out of the house.” One of these places is a friend’s farm. Visiting the farm was special because Josilyn rode a mule, saw baby chickens, and learned how to tell the difference between fresh eggs and eggs that have been sitting out for a week. Fresh eggs will sink to the bottom of a cup or bowl filled with water.

Another favorite activity was participating in an Earth Day clean-up at the Loves Creek Greenway Trail in Siler City. On April 22, 2017, a team comprised of Josilyn, Susan, Siler City’s Parks and Recreation Director, Joseph Keel, and student from the Beta Club at Chatham Charter in Siler City picked up trash along the trail. Eventually, Susan and Josilyn went through the steps to officially “adopt” the trail, thus giving them civic responsibility to make sure the trail is kept clean. Josilyn is proud of this accomplishment. “When the [adoption] signs were put up, it made me feel special—and that I have a big responsibility in helping keep the community clean and safe.”

Susan delights in how much Josilyn has “bloomed.” Josilyn exhibits a great attitude, acts as a leader, and just made A/B Honor Roll! Others have also noticed the difference. Josilyn was recently honored by her class when she was chosen as September’s “Lion Cub Leader” for being Proactive. When asked about being selected, she said, “It feels good. I’m showing a good example for the school.” Being proactive is “always helping others, and being nice.” Indeed. These are the same qualities Susan shows Josilyn when spending time with her each week.

Susan said the best part about being Josilyn’s mentor is that it’s a “really good match.” When elements like this align, the impact is large and everyone—the child, the mentor, the family, the school, and the entire community—benefits.

You can make a difference in the life of a child too! For more information on community and/or school-based mentoring, contact Shirille Lee, Program Manager, Mentoring Program, at: (919) 663-0116 x 404; shirille@cischatham.org

Youth Garden

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Youth Garden

 

From the time they arrived early Sunday morning until just after lunch time, Chatham Community Church/Chatham SERVE volunteers worked to ready the CIS Youth Garden for winter.  New greens were planted, perennials were trimmed and cleaned and blueberry bushes transplanted … and the list goes on!  The garden literally glowed with the TLC these hard workers lavished on the garden in downtown Siler City.

Thank you, Chatham Community Church!

Want to find out how you can utilize your green thumbs with us? See our current Volunteer Schedule.

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