The Benefits of Music

Since 2015, The Young Musicians of Alamance (YMA) has been focused on breaking down barriers that keep children of low socio-economic means from fully exploring the world of music. The group was founded by Beth Bader after watching a 60 Minutes report on El Sistema of Venezuela. El Sistema began in 1975 with the mission to bring free classical music education to impoverished children to promote opportunity and development for these underserved youth.

Since the summer of 2020, Allie Arpajian has served as the executive director of YMA. Taking on this role during the pandemic has been challenging, but Arpajian also has found it has allowed for creativity and innovation. For instance, to keep the kids engaged she introduced a new program —a virtual bucket drumming class, which added about six new students. Currently around 35 students are engaged with virtual violin lessons, as well as general music classes. Enrollment for bucket drumming is currently open, and families can register their child at ymofa.org.

Traditionally, YMA has focused on stringed instruments and has a large selection of violins that, pre-pandemic, would be distributed to students in Title 1 schools in Alamance County. These students would then receive about 10 hours of instruction a week at no charge. The students are also given the violin to take home and keep for the year for practice. Arpajian says, “YMA pays for the upkeep of the instrument as well as lessons.” The value of the music instruction, instrument and its upkeep totals about $2,500 per child.

A partnership with the First Reformed United Church of Christ has provided YMA not only with a space for practice but also previously provided a sponsorship to further their mission. Pre-COVID, students reported to the church on weekends for lessons from 10 am to 1 pm. During that time the kids were also feed a hot meal. “All of the kids in the program are on free or reduced lunch, so this helped us to know they had a good meal on the weekends,” Arpajian explains.

Moving forward, Arpajian hopes to connect with Alamance Achieves to evaluate YMA’s programming. “We think together we can get some nice data on how the arts, specifically music is impacting our youth, how it sets them up for success — not just academically, but socially, emotionally,” she explains. The hope is that the data will let YMA know if they’re achieving the goals they’ve set out.  

 YMA also hopes to expand its reach further this spring, with a fundraiser to kick off a ukulele program, which kids have expressed an interest in, as well as preparing to find additional teachers for the fall, when hopefully children are back in the classroom. “There are so many benefits of music,” Arpajian says. “From increasing academics, to making kids be better problem solvers, to increasing empathy — there are so many things music can do for these kids.”

Encouraging Reading in a Virtual World

Parents and teachers across the county and around the world have been concerned about the toll that virtual learning is having on students. After a conversation with a friend who authored a children’s book, Shereá Burnett decided she could do something to help in Alamance County. She reached out to some other friends on social media about showcasing authors of color reading their children’s books on Zoom or Facebook. “My thought was that children of color may find inspiration to read and even to explore their goals by seeing characters and authors who look like them,” she says.

It didn’t take long for Burnett’s virtual reading event to get off the ground. “There was a lot of excitement about the idea, so I facilitated a planning meeting and the ball started rolling from there,” Burnett explains. While initially the goal was to only have the series last through Black History Month, she says it is now scheduled to go through mid-May.

By having the event videos on Facebook, parents and teachers are able to play the videos for children either as they are working with them during the school day, as a stand-alone activity or as a bedtime story in the days following the live event. Each book that has been read provides important messages and lessons for the youth. Best of all, they are learning in a fun, more relaxed setting while being kept safe from COVID exposure.

The virtual reading event doesn’t target a specific age group, but the majority of the authors have written or read books that are targeted to elementary or middle school-aged children.

The event has several co-sponsors: Alamance Achieves; Allied Churches of Alamance County, Inc.; Burnett’s Chapel Christian Church; Ellena N. Gean Books (Adrienne Barr); Future Alamance; Genesis Child Development Center; The K.E.Y.A. Foundation; ThisWomansWords (Shereá Burnett); and the WNCC Western District Social Action Commission (Reverend Tamara Kersey).

Burnett is particularly grateful for the support provided by Alamance Achieves. “Working with Lexy Roberts has been amazing! She has provided literacy resources for me to advertise during each reading event and has also provided wonderful information and opportunities for parents and school personnel to give feedback about things like summer learning,” she shares. “This provides our adult viewers with viable action steps for how to continue to promote literacy and/or to give feedback about things that are not working.”

Since getting the program off the ground, Burnett feels that the series has driven home the point of how important it is for children to see people who look like them in the books that they read or that are read to them. “It’s not just important during their respective history months, but all year long,” she says.

Questions? Email sherea.burnett@gmail.com

Spread Kindness for World Autism Awareness Day

Covering a broad range of conditions, there is no one type of autism. Autism,
or autism spectrum disorder (ASD), is characterized by challenges with social skills, repetitive behaviors, speech and nonverbal communication. It is believed to affect about 1 in every 54 U.S. children, according to the Centers for Disease Control. April 2 marks the 14th annual World Autism Awareness Day,
a time to bring attention to this disorder and how to create a kinder, more inclusive world for those living with autism.

The challenges of autism

Children present with a range of symptoms depending on where they fall on the spectrum in[SE1]  addition to the challenges autism creates for learning and thinking, it is also often accompanied by sensory sensitivities and other medical issues. These may include gastrointestinal (GI) disorders, seizures or sleep disorders, and mental health challenges such as anxiety, depression and attention issues.

Most children begin to show signs of ASD around the ages of 2 or 3. It is possible for some developmental delays to appear even earlier, around 18 months. Research has shown people with autism have more positive outcomes the earlier they are diagnosed and receive interventions.

A mother searches for answers

Cheryl Leath knew from an early age that her son Kaison was different. “He was different from my two older kids; he was the quietest child,” she explains. At first she thought he had hearing issues because he wasn’t doing the call and response he should have been or babbling by his first-year checkup. “I told the doctor I think there is something going on with him but I couldn’t put my finger on it,” Leath recalls.

 When Kaison was a few months older, Leath took him for a hearing test. The audiologist told her that Kaison could hear, that something else was going on and Leath should trust her instincts. At the next visit with the pediatrician, Leath again voiced her concerns and the doctor connected her with the Child Development Service Agency (CDSA). They performed a lengthy evaluation of Kaison before telling the Leaths they were “90% sure that what your child is experiencing is autism spectrum disorder.”

 Leath experienced a range of emotions that day, but since Kaison’s diagnosis she’s found her own way forward. “I’ve been very open about it with him — trying to explain things,” she says. Kaison was nonverbal until about four-and-a-half years old, but he was able to be mainstreamed into kindergarten and is now preparing to transition into middle school. “I approach him like he’s a regular kid, but if something doesn’t work for him, I ask him why and give him a chance to explain,” she says. “I talk about him being wired differently, and tell him if something doesn’t work for you, tell me why and I’m ok with that.”

Living with autism

On average, autism costs an estimated $60,000 a year through childhood. Most of these costs come from special services a child may need, as well as lost wages parents experience because of increased demands on their time from caring for their child with ASD. Costs only increase if the child’s intellectual disability is more severe.

Children with autism can design an IEP via the exception children’s department of most public schools while in schools to receive services to help meet their learning needs. Leath’s son Kaison was able to join a preliminary research in Chapel Hill before he began school that provided 26 weeks of in-home support with a speech therapist, an occupational therapist and a behavioral therapist. Leath changed from first to third shift to be there during the visits, which happened several days a week.

AustismSpeaks.org estimates that over the next decade, an estimated 707,000 to 1,116,000 teens with ASD will enter adulthood and age out of school-based autism services. 

 Currently, there is no one cause or reason why a child develops autism. In fact, research has indicated that ASD develops from a combination of factors — both genetic and environmental. Each person with autism will have his or her own unique set of strengths and challenges in terms of learning, thinking and problem-solving. Some may be severely challenged and need significant support in their daily lives. Others may require less support and be able to live all on their own. But all people with autism deserve the opportunity to reach their full potential.

The Power of Mentorship

When it comes to education, mentorship plays a crucial role for many, particularly people of color, something Alamance Achieves recognizes and is actively working to foster throughout Alamance County through their partnerships with educators and others in the community.

For Dr. Donna H. Oliver, mentorship is personal. Not only did she benefit from it during her education and her career, but she also felt compelled to pay it forward once she was able.

Dr. Oliver didn’t set out to become an educator. Her first dream was to become a medical doctor. As one of the first Black students at Williams High School, Dr. Oliver remembers clearly a history class where they were discussing the Civil War. As the only Black student in the class, she felt particularly uncomfortable. “It made me feel invisible and unimportant,” she recalls. “But my teacher took that conversation and turned it in such a way that I began to sit up in my seat and feel proud and feel important as a young black girl in the South. Then I was able to hear some of the white students discussing the topic from a different point of view from what they were saying when the conversation first started.” At that moment, Dr. Oliver became aware of the power teachers have — the power to save a young person by saving their mind just as a medical doctor saves the body from disease. ‘I felt I received a calling to be a teacher.”

That teacher, Nancy Garner, changed Dr. Oliver’s path. But she wasn’t her first mentor. That honor goes to her kindergarten teacher Juanita Spaulding, who also went to her church, and continued to mentor her throughout her life. “When I became North Carolina Teacher of the Year, she was by my side,” she said. Another early teacher, Julia Jordan, became a life-long mentor and supporter, as did John A. Freeman, the second principal Dr. Oliver worked under as a teacher.

“He pushed and pulled me, he recommended me for a variety of teaching honors and he assigned me many leadership roles because, unbeknownst to me, he was preparing me for future leadership roles. Because of his mentorship and leadership, I was selected by my peers as the Cummings High School Teacher of the Year, which started me on the path to becoming the Burlington City Schools Teacher of the Year and, ultimately, the North Carolina Teacher of the Year and National Teacher of the Year.”
–Dr. Donna H. Oliver

This legacy of support continued into Dr. Oliver’s time in college at the then Elon College, where Mr. Voight Morgan, a biology professor, took the time to nurture her in a school where she was again one of only a handful of Black students. “That meant so much to me as a student at a predominately white school.” Even when Dr. Oliver transitioned into working in higher education, the power of mentors continued to influence her life. “Dr. Gloria Randle Scott and Dr. Johnnetta Betsch Cole, from Bennett College, both continue to mentor me to this day, and I even have a personal friendship now with Dr. Cole.”

Dr. Oliver considers herself a teacher at heart, and she believes that a part of teaching is mentoring. She tries to practice the three C’s — acting as a consultant to former students, colleagues and friends, as well as a counselor for them and a cheerleader. Her goal is to motivate and inspire those whom she mentors, while helping them understand that they can achieve anything they set their minds to.

Dr. Oliver continues to lead the way for aspiring teachers and executive administrators, having served as the first Black woman president to lead a state university in Mississippi, and the first and only woman to date to serve as president of Mississippi Valley State University. During her term as president, she mentored two of her cabinet members and today both of them have become successful college and/or university presidents. Her mentorship has also led to many of her former high school and college students becoming classroom teachers and principals, teachers of the year in their respective schools and many have earned their doctorate degrees under her mentorship.

During her career in education, Dr. Oliver has seen strides being made toward equity for students of color, but she is quick to acknowledge that the work is nowhere near complete, nor will it be without additional legislation to close the inequality and access gap. “There are many underserved students still today in low socio-economic areas, who don’t have a computer, who don’t have access to the internet.”

In addition to leveling the playing field in terms of resources and access, Dr. Oliver stresses the importance of the nation making education a top priority for all students. “Standards and expectations have to be high, for both teachers and students. There is no room for mediocrity in the classroom — academically or socioeconomically. We need masterful, effective teachers in our classrooms who genuinely care about all students. Thank God for those teachers, as there are so many of them. We just need to pay them and respect them. We also need smaller class sizes to help students learn better in comfortable well-designed classroom,” she says.

Dr. Oliver concludes, “Teaching is a privilege and an honor, an art and a science, especially when you do it right. Remember, teachers teach today and touch tomorrow! My continued hope is that one day America will truly realize that when it comes to honoring professions, highly effective, masterful teachers should be at the top — in respect and salary. The biggest investment America can make in itself is to invest in education for all!”

Learning in a Pandemic

Handling what the pandemic has thrown at students and their families, as well as teachers, has been top of mind for many people over the past year. The educators in the Alamance Burlington School System (ABSS) worked quickly last spring and summer to assess their students’ needs to ensure that learning continued despite the disruptions.

While it has been a struggle, many have worked hard to find the positives along the way. “We’ve had so many opportunities to show that we can go above and beyond what the concept of education was or is now,” explained Amy Richardson, Chief Accountability Officer with the Alamance Burlington School System’s Office of Student Learning.

Going online

Between April and July 2020, ABSS investigated several online instructional platforms, before opting for Google Classroom for kindergarten through 5th grade, and Canvas for middle and high school students. The goal was to find systems that would provide students and teachers continuity and ease of use. “In doing that, we landed on a way to not only deliver lessons, but we also worked to streamline the core curriculum to guarantee our standards were a part of the curriculum kids get at every school,” Richardson said.

From there, training was provided for nearly every teacher on how to use the platforms, what it meant to have digital resources and how to best provide blended learning. Richardson shared, “All of this gives us a solid base for coming back to core learning, too. And we’ve made adjustments along the way for what worked well, what didn’t and where can we continue to make improvements.”

Additionally, ABSS’s efforts included providing hotspots to families in the school system’s more rural communities, as well as to get devices into students’ hands.

A big part of the ongoing process has been recognizing the interconnectedness of various systems that impact students and their learning in Alamance County. For instance, Richardson shared that  the challenge for some rural residents was simply about internet connectivity. “If you can’t get a cell signal, a hot spot won’t work,” she said. “We can provide a device, but if the infrastructure is not there, we can only go so far to meet that need.” Despite these challenges, she has been amazed to see the ongoing dedication of the school system’s Technology department, who have been working nonstop to provide hotspots and resources to students.

Staying on track

Keeping all students on track for learning has been a significant concern, and this is something that ABSS is also addressing. They have identified high school seniors at risk of not graduating, and they are providing additional, individualized support sessions to either get the student back on track to graduation this year or to shorten the extra time they will need graduate.

A similar focus is being given to 8th graders who will transition to high school in the fall. Meanwhile for those students in third grade, the need to meet end-of-grade reading proficiency levels, part of the state’s Read to Achieve legislation, has not changed. What is yet to be determined is whether the reading camp to assist those not meeting the standards will be in-person or remote this summer. 

Along the way, Alamance Achieves has been a valuable partner, particularly in their response to putting resources into students’ hands, such as books. “One of the goals was a push to get books into homes, since regular access to the school and classroom libraries went away,” Richardson said. Alamance Achieves stepped in to help create literacy rich environments in the home. “It was exciting to hear about those efforts.”

A Look Back at 2020

Alamance Achieves is proud of the continuing impact it has on helping
its broad coalition of people, organizations and systems who are working
together to improve health care and education outcomes for all in
Alamance County. Our 2020 annual report is an opportunity to show
our national partners, StriveTogether, the impact of our work, but it is also
a chance to let the community know about the efforts being made, so they
can get involved with us.

Here is a look back at 2020 to highlight many of our efforts last year and what will be our focus moving forward.

Early Health & Well-being

To support moms and babies from birth, the Alamance County Health Department is exploring the implementation of a Universal Home Visiting program that would help connect all families and infants in Alamance County with the support they need. The next steps are aligning funding sources, identifying existing gaps and opportunities in postpartum support for families, and engaging community stakeholders in implementation.

Kindergarten Readiness

Ensuring that children are prepared for kindergarten sets them up for success throughout elementary school and beyond. Last year, we expanded access to Ready Freddy, an evidence-based program that supports families and kids as they prepare for starting school. 

Third-grade Reading

To support students learning remotely, Beyond the Classroom, a group of community partners and school leaders, created eight learning hubs to assist more than 100 students in Alamance County. The goal of the hubs was to help minimize learning loss, support families with limited access to high-speed internet and devices, and promote social-emotional health during this stressful time.

Pandemic Solutions

The disruption that resulted due to COVID-19 in 2020 is ongoing, but Alamance Achieves and our partners — the Alamance-Burlington School System, Alamance County Public Libraries, Burlington Housing Authority, Alamance County Government, S.A.F.E., Healthy Alamance and Alamance Partnership for Children — were quick in shifting our focus to adapt to the changing needs of children and families in Alamance County. One example was our support of the work of our partners who lead an effort to establish more than 240 food distribution sites to help those in need, as well as more than 200 grab-and-go bus stops were created to allow children to pick up meals even if their parents were working.

Other efforts to align strategies to fit the new and changing needs included testing a strategy to address the stress on families with young children by offering a service to a small group of families in two elementary school zones that delivered some basic hard-to-find household needs such as toilet paper, paper towels and disinfecting wipes.

Looking Ahead

As a result of the investments made by the community in 2020, 86 families were enrolled in Ready4K, 39 more kindergartens started school on track to succeed and, during the pandemic, 753 emotional/social books were delivered to students and 53 families with young children were able to divert additional funds toward expenses and bills.

Moving forward, we are focused on amplifying community voices and working toward ensuring more Black, Latinx and Indigenous families, students and youth are guiding the work to come. It was recently announced we were selected to receive a grant from the StriveTogether Challenge Fund to support our work. All of these efforts will include a push to ensuring we are partnering with an equity lens so as many voices as possible are contributing to our efforts in 2021.

Elon Service Year Fellows

Giving back to the community that supported them.

The Elon Year of Service Graduate Fellows program is a partnership between Elon University and several organizations in Alamance County, which offers six recent Elon graduates the opportunity to engage in one year of meaningful service work to improve the health, education and economic well-being of residents in Alamance County.

Lallo Yadeta is one of this year’s Data Fellows, and she has spent her time with Alamance Achieves, one of the program’s six supported agencies. Others are Alamance County Health Department; Alamance Regional Medical Center; Economic Development, City of Burlington; Healthy Alamance and Impact Alamance. Lallo has been focused on several projects including visualizing the raw data the school system and other partners have given Alamance Achieves, facilitating the data team and providing data to help contextualize Alamance Achieve’s Community Voice Project. “Additionally, Sylvia Ellington and I have formed a Racial Equity Team where we hope to convene equity practitioners in the county to discuss best practices,” she said. 

During the year, fellows receive a plethora of support from Elon University, including access to the Student Professional Development Center, personalized training from Elon’s Center for Leadership, graduate school information sessions and access to faculty/staff liaisons.

Lallo feels the program is a great opportunity for the students who are involved. “Most importantly, it’s a great way for the university to connect with Alamance County,” she shared. “The fellowship allows students who were a part of this community for four years to give back and make actionable and meaningful change.”

Lallo was a double major at Elon University, receiving a degree in Public Health and International & Global Studies with a minor in Political Science. After her year as a Fellow ends, she plans to pursue a master’s in public health. 

While COVID-19 did not affect the size or recruitment of this year’s group of fellows, it did change the level of daily collaboration amongst members of the cohort. Adapting has been a challenge, but all the fellows have risen to the occasion and continued to find ways to best serve the community and make the fellowship an enriching experience.  

A Community's Journey Within a National Movement

Alamance Achieves is committed to the goal of every child in Alamance County thriving, from cradle to career. Achieving this requires educational equity. To help in this effort, Alamance Achieves’ work is being supported by their national partner, StriveTogether, through the Challenge Fund. StriveTogether is a nationwide network that works with communities at a local level to transform failing systems with a collaborative improvement methodology that directs data from small changes to inform adjustments in that community.

Part of that effort involves StriveTogether’s Theory of Action™ framework, which supports communities that are working towards changing the systems that shape opportunity.

StriveTogether’s Theory of Action provides progressive milestones for change. It is not a prescription that must be followed to the letter. This adaptability allows a community’s local context to guide the framework of how things get done. The milestones inform necessary collaboration of cross-sector leaders from systems like education, housing, health care and more to realize better results for each communities’ youth and families. It does this by focusing on the organization of all the moving pieces in a community that impact a child and his or her family in a way that more effectively gets kids from birth to a meaningful career.

To measure progress, the Theory of Action looks at six different “gateways”—exploring, emerging, sustaining, systems change, proof point and systems transformation. Alamance Achieves is currently at the sustaining gateway. The grant from StriveTogether will move Alamance Achieves further along the continuum, closer to systems transformation. These milestones provide communities with a way of seeing how they are progressing through their efforts towards their desired outcomes. And each gateway involves evidence-based decision making, collaborative action, a shared community vision, and investment and sustainability. Doing so, ensures a more equitable outcome for children and families.

StriveTogether is currently working with more than 70 communities across the country, including Alamance County, to achieve the goal of helping every child succeed in school and life. They provide resources, tools and best practices to help communities create opportunities for children and to close any equity gaps that exist in education.

Throughout it all, StriveTogether and its partners are committed to engaging with the community, advancing equity, developing a culture of continuous improvement and leveraging existing resources all in support of education.

Alamance Achieves was just named an awardee for the Challenge Fund from StriveTogether. They join fifty other communities across 26 states who are working to deliver more equitable outcomes for children and families. These communities are part of the Cradle to Career Network, a national movement led by StriveTogether to ensure every child has every opportunity to succeed. Altogether, StriveTogether has provided $20 million in grants since the onset of the pandemic in 2020 and will award another $12 million by the end of 2021.