|
The feature below is brought to you by Freedom Elementary School, an organization that is in the running to receive a See Beautiful Grant. For more information about all of our giving initiatives, please click here. To learn more about Freedom Elementary School, please visit their website: here. Reading Together at Freedom School We see beauty every day in the faces of our students and their families at Freedom School! Watching our students learn and grow is a great source of pride for our staff and our families. Freedom Elementary School in Freedom, CA is a K-5 public school with 652 students. 95% of our students are Latino and 64% are classified as English Language learners. 91% of our students qualify for free or reduced lunch. Our staff, students and their families are our greatest strength. The students know that they are valued and are active participants in their learning. To help students succeed, we need to have families involved in the culture of literacy. In general the younger students are asked to read with a family member for 15-20 minutes per night. Reading with a family member can encourage a love of reading and increases reading frequency. Most of our families do not have many books at home, so the teachers send home books for the children to borrow. Getting appropriate books to students and their families is a crucial step in promoting literacy. To this end, we have installed a little free library in front of our school to provide free access to books for our students even when the school is closed. Letting the students choose the books they take also helps to cultivate a joy of reading. It is truly a beautiful sight to see children rushing to the little library to get new books! While the library has been a huge success, we lack books that reflect our students’ primary language (Spanish) and have culturally appropriate characters. High quality Spanish books are expensive and difficult to find. We want to provide more high quality books in Spanish so that students can develop their primary language and be able to see themselves reflected in the books they read.
To promote early oral language and literacy development, we are also starting a family literacy project called Freedom Families Read Together. The students will learn how to read books aloud with their younger siblings and help them develop vocabulary and comprehension. Each week the students in the program will take home a bag of books in their primary language and read them with their younger siblings or other family members. Our families are our first teachers, and this will allow the school aged students to share what they have already learned with their younger relatives. This family reading project will help the students to build their own fluency and confidence and promote oral language development in their younger siblings which is a critical foundation for literacy. Giving students a chance to share stories in their primary language helps them to see themselves as readers and writers. Representation matters to students and we want to celebrate our community’s culture in our school. We have just begun the process to become a dual language school which has been shown to be beneficial academically and culturally. We are optimistic that by embracing our students’ primary language we can help develop a truly bilingual and biliterate school culture. There is a saying that those who know two languages are doubly valuable and that is truly beautiful! Written by: Julie Hitchcock
0 Comments
The feature below is brought to you by The Smile Project, an organization that is in the running to receive a See Beautiful Grant. For more information about all of our giving initiatives, please click here. To learn more about The Smile Project, please visit their website: here. The [Story of the Smile] Project. Wednesday, November 9th, 2011 was just like any other day in Western Pennsylvania. I was 17 years old and driving home from my high school, down the same back country roads I had ridden my entire life. It was unseasonably warm for November and I had my windows down and my radio up. I can tell you the exact curve on the exact street where I had the most crystal-clear thought of my entire life: Day 1: Happiness is.. those perfect car rides where the radio just plays all the right songs. I was about to return to my radio sing-a-long when I realized what had just happened. It wasn’t a simple moment of thinking that it was a nice day. It was something telling me that this was Day 1, that Wednesday, November 9th, 2011 was about to be the start of something beautiful. Like all 17-year-olds in 2011 when they think they have an idea to change the world, I logged onto Facebook and posted the status. That was over 2,600 days ago. I have shared a single “Happiness is” status on Facebook every single day since. Those early Facebook statuses – though I wouldn’t realize what was brewing at the time – grew into The Smile Project, a nonprofit organization dedicated to spreading Happiness through random acts of kindness. Happiness is.. those perfect car rides where the radio just plays all the right songs. The Smile Project exists to encourage people of all ages to share kindness in their communities. One way this is implemented is through SPARK clubs. SPARK stands for “Strengthening Positivity and Reinforcing Kindness.” These random acts of kindness clubs are operated by young people in middle school, high school, and college. Since the launch of the SPARK initiative in 2016, students have partnered with local businesses and charities to create ripples of change in their communities. There are currently five active SPARK clubs. With support from The Smile Project, they band together to share Happiness and find beauty in their communities and in each other. One college SPARK club hosts a free “Glow Yoga” class to help students destress. Another high school SPARK club is using social media for good – highlighting members of their school who are caught doing kind things for others. By being a member of SPARK, these young people gain valuable leadership skills while also learning about the power of joy. By showing that no one is is ever too young to make a difference, we are empowering the next generation of leaders. In the summer of 2018, The Smile Project embarked on a 56-day cross country tour, spreading joy around America. The working hypothesis was that no matter what we look like, what we believe in, where we live, or who we voted for, human kindness is something that runs through each of us. The trip was designed as a giant “pay it forward” project, with one group gifting something to the next. For example, when we brought animal shelter donations to the Arizona Animal Welfare League in Phoenix, the staff handed us handwritten cards to bring to the veterans of the Travis Manion Foundation at our next stop in San Diego. Those same veterans collected school supplies which were given to the Skid Row Learning Center in Los Angeles. The #SmileProjectRoadTrip highlighted the best of America and the best of humanity. We worked with over 30 organizations in 28 states, bought meals for over 35 people, delivered hundreds of animal supplies, donated over 200 articles of clothing, and even helped a lost dog get back to its owners. The Smile Project has been featured in the Huffington Post as well as on news stations in Los Angeles, Portland, San Diego, and Omaha. The Smile Project chooses to “see beautiful” in every day and in every person we meet. While every day may not be perfect, we choose to believe that every day affords us the opportunity to find an inkling of joy. To learn more about The Smile Project, visit: www.the-smile-project.com. Written by: Liz Buechele, Founder of The Smile Project .The feature below is brought to you by HIVE, Inc, an organization that is in the running to receive a See Beautiful Grant. For more information about all of our giving initiatives, please click here. To learn more about HIVE, Inc, please visit their website: here. Welcome to the hive. The clubhouse at HIVE, Inc. (“the hive”) is a beautiful place. It is beautiful not because it is a newly renovated space with huge windows, lots of light, peaceful gray walls, and shelves full of art supplies, games, and interesting artifacts, but rather, any beauty you see at “the hive” comes from the people inside its walls. Membership at “the hive” includes boys and girls, men and women from all walks of life. Some of them are teenagers in their last years of high school. Others are navigating through their 20s, gathering together for laughter and conversation around video games and pizza, still trying to figure out how these last few steps into adulthood are going to be taken. Others are older, turning their attention to developing skills they need for careers, gathering with their peers around warm cups of coffee and card games. All these people have bright smiles, infectious laughter. They share their joys and commiserate on struggles. The stories they tell each other and lessons they teach clubhouse visitors are about perseverance, defying odds, and keeping the right positive perspective on life. The time they spend at HIVE, Inc. centers around attending educational workshops on a variety of topics, exploring hobbies and interests, maintaining friendships, developing vocational skills and contributing to the community through volunteerism and service projects. HIVE, Inc. is an organization that functions like a community center, serving teens and adults with disabilities in South Central Kentucky. “The hive” creates opportunities in the areas of habilitation, information, vocational skills, volunteerism, and education. There are weekly and monthly classes in yoga, music, gardening, soap & candle making, art, and woodworking; educational workshops in disability rights and laws, advocacy, nutrition & healthy living, community safety, prevention of abuse & exploitation; vocational skill development through a vendor booth at a local market selling the handmade soaps and candles HIVE members make, and also through a vending machine business operated by HIVE members. Volunteer opportunities are coordinated through partnerships with other local organizations and agencies. Skills needed for living independently are practiced by HIVE members as they perform the maintenance on the clubhouse (cleaning, landscaping, changing light bulbs, etc.). “The Hive” is not diagnosis specific, and does not bill insurance for services, so the clubhouse is available to ANY teen or adult with ANY physical, developmental, or intellectual disability, regardless of background, economic status, insurance provider, or status for state waiver services or government funding. This is particularly important because many waiver services and government programs/funding are exhausted or have long “wait lists,” and there are few options available for continuing education beyond high school for people with disabilities. This lack of services and resources leaves individuals with disabilities and their families isolated and without supports needed for future success. HIVE, Inc. founder, Laura Orsland, experienced this first hand, when her son, Taylor, who has a disability, graduated high school. In looking for ways for him to keep learning after high school, to work on skills he hadn’t quite mastered, to meet new people and be able to socialize with friends, Laura realized that there weren’t any real options available to Taylor or their family. Adult daycare wasn’t really a good fit for him, and he wasn’t a candidate for traditional postsecondary education. Laura described Taylor’s high school graduation as “similar to walking off a cliff…For his nondisabled peers, it’s a step out into this journey of college or jobs and learning and growing…moving onto bigger things. But for Tay, and kids like him, graduating high school meant the end of services he’d been getting for years. The end of seeing his friends every day. The end of learning.” ...for Tay, and kids like him, graduating high school meant the end of services he’d been getting for years. The end of seeing his friends every day. The end of learning.” -Laura Orsland This is the case for many, many people with disabilities. Unemployment rates are higher among individuals with disabilities than any other group, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, and 63% of people with disabilities will NOT enroll in post-secondary education. They face barriers like accessibility issues, costs of adaptive technology, lack of training for teachers and staff, and lack of moderate or high level collaboration between higher learning institutions and state vocational rehabilitation offices. Additionally, only 25% of youth with disabilities report being engaged in some type of volunteerism or community service that connects them to the community. After much research and discussion with other parents and professionals, Laura determined to create a place of learning and friendship for people with disabilities. Her vision was innovative. The idea was to create an organization that would address needs and “fill in the gaps” in opportunities. A place for higher learning, but also a high level of creativity and fun, not an “institution.” And that’s how “the hive” was born. HIVE, Inc. opened its clubhouse doors in January 2017, serving a few individuals with disabilities and their families across 3 counties in Kentucky. Currently, “the hive” serves 46 individuals and their families, 4 professional service provider agencies and 3 school systems across 6 counties in Kentucky, and membership is growing rapidly! HIVE, Inc. exists to break down barriers. THE MISSION: to empower individuals to lead fulfilling, self-determined lives by providing the needed supports to make informed choices, build relationships, experience respect, and make contributions as fully participating citizens. THE VISION: A barrier-free community in which all individuals may live, work, and enjoy access to limitless opportunities as valued citizens. Want to See Beautiful? Help HIVE, Inc. create opportunities for people with disabilities to grow in relationships with others, to have options and make informed choices, to experience respect and be valued and contributing members of their communities, and to live with purpose according to interests and abilities… Want to See Beautiful? Check out the opportunities given at HIVE, Inc. that allow strong, inspiring women and men to lead fulfilling, beautiful lives. You can catch a glimpse at http://thehivebg.org, on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/thehivebg, or Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/h.i.v.e.inc. Article Submitted by: Jessica Wilson, Program Coordinator at HIVE, Inc. |
See beautiful in yourself.
|
RSS Feed
