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

Can you picture freshly made pasta drying on a coat hanger? Hanging from a ceiling light fixture?  Well, at the RISE Millwood site we needed to hang the pasta out to dry somewhere, and a student’s clever idea was right on the money.   On March 10th, our students spent the enhancement hour  learning to combine fresh ingredients like tomatoes, onions, and garlic with lentils, rice, and macaroni to make a traditional  Egyptian dish called Koshari; we also learned how to make our own pasta from scratch and discussed what makes a food “raw,” how to eat healthy whole foods, and how to write out a recipe.  Our students were even tasked with consulting their families’ recipes to check the authenticity of our RISE Koshari.

Join us on Thursday, March 20th at 8 p.m. at the Basement to see Anthony Adams & the Nite Owls, Brittany Kennell, The Beagles, Lewis, and Lauren Adelle perform at On the Stage Nashville. You will hear some of the best voices in town for only $5 AND the proceeds from the event will benefit CRIT! The proceeds will directly support our Ride to Learn campaign, in which we are asking for your donations to help us purchase a van to transport our refugee and immigrant students who lack transportation but are dedicated students in our elders, agricultural, and afterschool programs. Check out Lauren Adelle singing below and we’ll see you on Thursday!