By Claire Cooper
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are. – Theodore Roosevelt

When I decided to move back to the United States after living abroad for three years, I was skeptical that my passion for cultural exploration, foreign language, ESL teaching, and diverse empowerment work could be satisfied by employment I’d find in America. While abroad, I’d developed these passions into skills – developing communication, teaching, mentoring, and entrepreneurial skills for a cross-cultural environment – and I didn’t want to allow them to fade.
Thus, I was thrilled to have to opportunity to join the Refugee and Immigrant Student Empowerment afterschool program and the Center for Refugees and Immigrants Tennessee as a 2014-2015 AmeriCorps member. Through this position I’ve been able to continue to teach and mentor students, support empowerments activities, and learn about the vast cultural, linguistic, and socioeconomic diversity of the student body in Metro Nashville Public Schools.

 
Students in the RISE program range from second-generation immigrants from Mexico to newly resettled Somali and Karen refugees. The needs of the at-risk youth in our program are diverse and unique due to their international backgrounds. Thus, while our program has naturally sought to support them in English language acquisition and academic achievement, we’ve also striven to support development of their cross-cultural adaptability, personal resiliency and self-direction, and physical and emotional health.

 
Now, my service is coming to a close, and next year I will pursue my international and community development interests through continued studies in a Masters of Public Health in Global Health/Epidemiology at Vanderbilt University.

 
As I’ve reflect on how my year with AmeriCorps has changed my professional and personal aims, I’ve realized that my concept of what improving the health of the global community looks like has broadened and deepened. For one, I no longer feel that I must work internationally to be of service to high-need, culturally diverse communities. There is much work yet to be done at home. Secondly, I more deeply understand how complex public health concerns are - neither confined by national borders, nor constrained to medical concerns, extending instead to systematic justice issues like education inequality and violence.

 
Going forward, I will always keep in mind what I’ve learned from my students, AmeriCorps supervisor, and my co-members: that were are a wealth of ways one can meet global needs with what we have, where we are.

 

 

 

 

 

by Ellen Larson, RISE Site Coordinator

Our RISE students at McMurray Middle School saw January bring students’ favorite enhancements from last semester and also new enhancements. Enhancement follows our academic period and involves members from the community or RISE staff teaching our students new skills, from photography to sports. As a site coordinator, I think what makes our program so great is that students have a genuinely good time and see the RISE afterschool program as a positive part of their day. One day, as I drove home some of our Iraqi students, they explained to me, in broken English, what school was like in Iraq: “There no good. Here, good,” the student said. Many of our students have already had traumatic life stories, and I consider RISE successful because students enjoy coming to RISE.

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by Claire Cooper

In my AmeriCorps position with the Center for Refugees and Immigrants Tennessee, I enjoy the opportunity to mentor and tutor students in the Refugee and Immigrant Student Enrichment afterschool program at Apollo Middle School. Our students come from diverse national, ethnic, religious, and linguistic backgrounds. Through my role as an AmeriCorps member, I support our students as they complete language and math related activities, their homework assignments, and a variety of enhancement activities such as art, cooking, sports, and music making.

For me, the most enjoyable moments usually come during our “book club days,” on Tuesdays and Thursdays, when my group of young ladies delve into reading Lois Lowry’s Gathering Blue. To begin with, students were responsible for brainstorming book options for the club and then they had to democratically narrow down the list. This small initial step of providing students more autonomy and an opportunity to direct their learning during RISE – an opportunity that is rare in the larger classrooms of the school-day - has clearly led to an increased and sustained excitement for this part of the day. Though we have been reading the story together for over a month, the students’ interest in the story and their investment in analyzing the book has only increased. The students initiate and sustain active discussions regarding the motivations of the characters and value differences evident in the dystopian world of the book, and they work together to evaluate the text. I’ve also been impressed by the way the students in lower grades strive to persevere reading the text that is above their level – something they may not be reliably exposed to elsewhere.

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Since the school year started, we have been learning so much together at RISE Stonebrook. The students at Stonebrook are an energetic bunch to say the least, always inquisitive, motivated to learn and to help one another. Together we have been exploring so many new things and have been having a great time doing it!

During our group academic time, students have been mastering their math skills with card games, math Jenga, and word problem games. To grow our vocabulary, students have been playing Scattergories. Just last week, students laughed as they read Diary of a Wimpy Kid together, and reflected on how they can relate in their journals.

During our enhancement time, the students have had the opportunity to explore their talents through a variety of lenses. Students at Stonebrook have captured images of things they love in photography, learned about teamwork, agility and endurance in soccer, learned about stress-relief and relaxation in yoga, and reflected on the meaning of imagery in music videos. Recently in their songwriting workshop, students wrote a song together about celebrating differences. It goes a little something like this, “Let’s have a celebration, let’s have a conversation. whether we’re near or far… Let’s have a celebration, let’s have a conversation, this is the story of who we are! The story never ends….”

Just last weekend we had the opportunity to explore the outdoors on a field trip to Long Hunter State Park hosted with Great Outdoors University! Students were excited to learn about edible plants, the ecosystem, and the life of a park ranger, not to mention enjoying fire-roasted marshmallows in s’mores!

 

#NAZA #AmeriCorps #VolunteerTn #MNAC

 

      

 

We have had a great beginning of the year at RISE Apollo. Our classroom is always full of energy, and with that we have already learned many new skills and have had so much fun doing it!

During our group academic time, we have been busy with book club on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The students loved discovering the goofy poetry of Shel Silverstein and Jack Prelutsky. Now we have broken into smaller groups and are busy reading novels. On Mondays and Wednesdays, we hold math competitions. The students love playing relay races, jeopardy, and they learn and improve important math skills at the same time.

During our enhancement time, the students have enjoyed trying out many new skills. This past week, we cooked and ate delicious food from all over the world and learned about the important role food plays in our shared experiences.

Each Monday we start off our week with soccer, something the students are always excited about! This past week we challenged PACE, another NAZA program, to a friendly match on the field. It was tons of fun as the students worked as a team and roused up their RISE spirit!  #NAZA #artembrace #AmeriCorps #VolunteerTn

July 8, 2014 - Tuesday at Stonebrook

Ten students came. Well, eleven, if you count the five year-old who came with his brother. Students are elementary and middle schoolers.

“All right, everyone! Get into groups of three, and answer this question, ‘Do you think freedom is free or does it come at a cost?’”

 

 

 

This week’s icebreaker is themed with a post-July Fourth tinge. Ms. Qena Armstrong, RISE volunteer, typically facilitates such questions. Armstrong has taught classes for almost one year, since September 2013.

As she finishes the icebreaker and hurries through a quick vocabulary lesson, a guest, Sisavanh Houghton, brings out her canvas.

 

 

Exquisite Nashville

Houghton is a part of the Exquisite Nashville project, hosted by the Frist Center.

The creators of the project are interested in the way that different cultures blend. Many immigrant groups find their home and have changed the city to have a surprisingly multicultural feel. The project incorporates the Exquisite Corpse.

Different community partners have a piece of the artwork, but none of them know what the whole looks like. After completion, the exhibition will be March-July 2015.

The children lean forward to look at Houghton’s canvases. She finished these Pollock-like canvases over the weekend. She instructs the children that they will be sketching animal shapes onto the canvases.

July 10, 2014 - Thursday at Stonebrook

Squeegee in hand, the Hip Hues assistant pushes the vert green ink across the screen. Children circled around her, the assistant produces a white t-shirt with a RISE logo.

After her instructions, RISE students form a line as they compete to be first in line to make their very own t-shirt.

 

 

 

 

After making t-shirts, students and Qena Armstrong, the volunteer teacher, congregate to the tennis court playing a short math game.

For the first time, students in the RISE after school program have the opportunity to participate in programming during the summer, thanks to a grant from the Metro Development and Housing Authority (MDHA). On Tuesdays and Thursdays throughout June and July, students at the Stonebrook RISE location participate in a variety of math and reading activities to keep them from the dreaded “summer slide,” in which students forget part of what they have learned over the school year. They have also had the opportunity to participate in several field trips. The students have gone to the Edmondson Pike Library, where they observed a series of entertaining science experiments and then checked out books of their choosing. They also have gone to the Wedgewood Community Garden to learn about eating healthy fruits and vegetables and harvest some of the Nashville Food Project’s tomatoes and okra! This summer, the program has a concentrated focus on health and wellness, so these outings really drive home in an experiential way the importance of eating well.

CRIT is also partnering with the Frist to create works of art around the idea of shared culture, under the title, “Exquisite Nashville.” Our students have already created two art pieces, with two more to go! Our teaching artist is Sisavanh Houghton, who also teaches at MTSU.

Thanks to MDHA, Nashville Food Project, the Frist, Second Harvest, and the Church of the Redeemer for making this all possible!

 

 

 

At the end of each programming year, Nashville After Zone Alliance (NAZA) holds the Amazing Race and Showcase to bring all the students together who have participated in the NAZA after school programs across Nashville. RISE has 4 sites that participated in this year’s Showcase. They all took part in the Field Day activities at Glencliff High School and showed off their art from their enhancement activities throughout the year. One site, Stonebrook, did a performance - they sang a song that they wrote with the help of an artist from the YMCA’s artEMBRACE. Another site, Haywood, won the Banner contest (see below). Mayor Karl Dean welcomed the students and handed out awards, including to two of our site coordinators, who completed the training module for Nashville’s Youth Coalition.

Thanks to all our site coordinators and volunteers for helping to make this such a great day for our students, and to all the staff of NAZA for planning such a wonderful event!

#NAZA #artEMBRACE #RISE

 

The year so far with the students at the CRIT-RISE-Haywood program has been a joy, complete with many surprises. It has been my pleasure to see them grow. Each time they shock me with courage and talent that none of us knew existed. We began 2014 with the Hip Hop Enhancement. Many of the students thought they were familiar with this style of dance, but soon found out it was harder than it looked. That didn’t stop any of them.  The students learned a routine and really had fun doing it. Some of them were naturals, others not so much, but the real treat was the dedication it took to learn the routine and to see them rise to the occasion. The next fabulous Enhancement was Songwriting. The students came up with a fantastic, heart-felt song with the aid of Mr. Bobby. Now if only I can get them to sing it at the Spring Showcase.  Oh, and I forgot mention that one of the quieter students has a solo rap. Keep your fingers crossed.

We were able to squeeze in a field trip on the weekend. Some of the students had expressed their desire to go to the downtown library and check out books and movies. This was such a treat for us. The weather was fantastic and the students are all so good.  One student spent the entire visit time trying to convince me to change the number of check outs they could take home with them that day. She may become a lawyer, who knows!

All of the boys plunged into Fashion Design, even though they had already determined that this was not the enhancement for them.  To our surprise, there is that word again, the boys created some pretty neat things to wear. Maybe not to your surprise, the girls were all geared up and ready to make their fashion statements come alive in their very own article of clothing that they designed and created.  This Enhancement really got them going, and they became very detailed oriented and did not want to put the project down.

RISE is not all about having great Enhancements -  it is also about helping our refugee and immigrant population have a support system during these critical years of schooling. The students have come to know that when they step through the doors, they will be expected to expand and not leave the same way they came in. They love to read books, together and alone. It is great to see the community that they have formed. The students feel safe and are free to try new things and not be criticized for making a mistake. I love to hear when they are doing better in school or want to share something that they have done or learned that week or day. We have been working on comprehension and their ability to retell a source text in their own words. They are gaining more confidence in their ability to read information and retell that information. Soon they will begin to understand that it is from this point of mastery that opinions can be formed. I asked one student, “Why did I pick this book?” The student replied back in a sarcastic tone, “Because you want us to change the world.” I wanted to burst out in laughter: I guess they have heard me say it so much, they may be tired of hearing it. But I’m not going to stop. These kids can change the world.

#NAZA

   

We have been doing lots of exciting activities at Stonebrook this Winter! We had our Fall Showcase in December. RISE students showed their artwork, and performed dance routines and songs they had written for their families and teachers, not to mention they cooked for everyone!

It was great to start a new chapter for RISE in January. This semester we have been very focused on academic activities and games, primarily focusing on basic math and reading skills since so many of the students have been living in the US for a year or less. Here are some of the activities we’ve been doing so far!

At the beginning of the semester, we took a field trip to see the Nashville Predators play hockey downtown.

We created a “Word Wall” where students bring in daily vocabulary words and write the definitions at the front of the classroom.

Our Science teacher just led a class last week where the students planted Snow Pea plants and we are eagerly waiting for them to sprout!

RISE students enjoy a Nashville Predators game! 

Ms. Tiffany accompanies RISE students to a dance clinic.

For our art enhancements this semester, we have already had Theatre, Hip Hop Dance, Songwriting and are just beginning Mural Painting. In Theatre, the students learned about what it means to be a stage actor and learned lots of fun improv games that take a lot of imagination. In Songwriting, the students worked together to write a song about achieving your dreams. Several students participated in a dance clinic sponsored by Move and Grooves; they loved the chance to do more hip hop!

Many thanks to the Metro Nashville Arts Commission, Moves and Grooves, and the Predators Foundation! RISE Enhancements are funded in part by the Metropolitan Nashville Arts Commission.