\
Check out Chatham Middle School students on WRAL TV!
These students participated in CIS CC’s Cooking Matters program, a collaboration with the Inter-Faith Food Shuttle.
Chatham Middle School
“Programs Don’t Change People, Relationships Do” ~Bill Milliken
The mission of Chatham County Schools (CCS) is “to graduate globally competitive and confident students by providing a rigorous and relevant curriculum in a supportive, safe and nurturing learning environment.” This is a lofty mission, and it’s difficult to achieve when many students face serious challenges both inside and outside of the classroom. That is why the work Communities In Schools of Chatham County (CISCC) does is so important. Joelle Brummitt-Yale, CISCC board member, says she values CISCC “for being the piece that schools don’t have time to address. CIS Chatham works to help youth be ‘well’ and that includes academically, socially, and behaviorally.” Taking a holistic and targeted approach to helping students succeed in school and in life is especially illustrated through CISCC’s school-based program.
Chatham Middle School (CMS) in Siler City is one of two sites where the school-based program is implemented. Students who attend CMS live in a community with many identified risk factors that impede their learning and the likelihood that they will stay in school. These factors include, but are not limited to, poverty, discrimination, housing instability, hunger, poor health, limited extracurricular activities and high levels of daily stress. The CISCC school-based model places Student Support Specialists directly inside schools where they serve as the single point of contact in addressing students’ needs. Tych Cowdin has been the CISCC Student Support Specialist at CMS since the fall of 2014. Since then, he has built strong relationships with school administrators and community partners to secure vital supports that are tailored to students’ and families’ individual circumstances.
Cowdin has one foot in the school and one foot in the community, and he brings them together beautifully. The support that he provides can be as basic as asking local businesses to provide school supplies, volunteers to provide academic assistance or partnering with a local church to provide students in need extra food on the weekends. Support can also be more intensive in the form of small groups and one-on-one check-in addressing bullying, anger management, and dealing with grief. Support can even be after-school enrichment activities. Whatever the needs are, the goal is to combine strong one-on-one relationships with evidence-based programs that leverage resources and remove barriers that keep students from succeeding.
According to Abby Bishop, School Counselor at CMS, “Tych has had a major impact on the students at CMS. He has a caseload of students he serves, but he also has a presence at the school where all students know him and want to work with him. He does a wonderful job of being around and being available to students.” Ms. Bishop is grateful for the many programs and services Cowdin has coordinated such as: summer camp placements, Cooking Matters, yoga classes, Strengthening Families Program, and many more. He works with CMS students about their behavior and focuses on the social/emotional development of each student so they have better academic outcomes. Bishop says, “Tych relates to the students and they feel comfortable opening up to him. He’s such a huge asset to our school! Tych is not only loved by all CMS students, he’s also loved by the CMS staff!” CMS principal Chad Morgan agrees. He said, “Cowdin’s “impact on the school has been just monumental,” and that his “greatest asset to our school is his ability to build relationships. He focuses on building relationships with all stakeholders…and his energy to serve is contagious.” Morgan adds that Cowdin does “not just start programs for the sake of starting programs. He listens, reviews data, and seeks feedback from all stakeholders to ensure the programs implemented match the needs of the school.” The needs assessment, student support plans, and ongoing monitoring of student data are all elements of the proven CIS school-based model; but, as Communities In Schools founder Bill Milliken said, “Programs don’t change kids-relationships do.”
Cowdin says, “It really boils down to a lot of mentoring. 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.” Attendance, Behavior, Coursework + Parent and family engagement are the focus areas guiding CISCC’s school-based work, but this ABC+P model only works with strong relationships inside and outside of the school.
The program’s positive impact is reflected in what community members and partners are saying. Recently, participants in the Hispanic Liaison Youth Program in Siler City participated in a focus group as part of a community assessment for the Building Integrated Communities Project out of UNC Chapel Hill on how the youth cope with daily stresses. The draft report stated that the youth may not be able to tell you what ‘programs’ helped them, but they talked about the “great person at Chatham Middle who built relationships with the kids, was enthusiastic and cared about them.
Erika Guy has been volunteering at CMS regularly for the last two years, conducting school-wide seminars, small groups, and helping coordinate the healthful cooking classes, and she speaks highly of the collaboration that has been fostered at CMS. She said to Cowdin, “I cannot adequately express how much fun it has been to collaborate with you over these last two years. What I missed the most when I left my job in Boston, was working with a team of similarly motivated folks—always thinking creatively about how to make the lives of kids just a little bit better. I have found that with you and Abby Bishop, CMS and CISCC.”
Thinking creatively and working together to make the lives of the children and families a little bit better—essentially helping add to their overall wellness— that’s what it’s all about.
To learn more about CISCC school-based model, the work done and partnerships made, please contact Tych Cowdin, Program Director/Student Support Specialist, Chatham Middle School at tcowdin@cischatham.org or (919) 663-0116 ext. 413
“Relationship Before the Task”
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
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.”
