Baby Steps- Summer Associates

Working in the Okolona community this summer has been great! This is my hometown community and I've feel that the contributions that was given by me was from the heart. I've not only served at the BabySteps site but I've also served at the Okolona Elementary School, an early childcare center (Armstrong's Kiddie Care), and I've also been helping at the City Hall preparing for the Magnolia Festival, which is an event that the community always look forward.

BabySteps, has been my main site and it has been just wonderful! I've always known about BabySteps, being an Okolona native but I never fully understood the impact that the program has on this community. The program is just great! The children come, learn, interact, open up, and actually want to come back and learn. The parents are even excited to see the children doing well and enjoying themselves. The parents also have been very cooperative with the program and anything they have been asked to do. The challenge for working at BabySteps was to make sure that along with learning, the children were enjoying the program and would be ready to return on the next day. The experience in an overall was much more than I expected. I never knew my community had some many smart children eager to learn and so many parents that would make sure they were in a program that helped them to do that. It was absolutely a joy to work with the children. When children tug on your shirt in a store and say "Ms. Amber, remember what we did at Baby Steps or what are doing tomorrow at school?" It brings such a warm feeling to my heart and I know I've done a good deed.

The two summer associates that have been working with me, Mareo Bogan and Latisha Pickens, have also been great to work with. Although I've been knowing Mareo, when the summer program started it was my first time meeting Tish and now it is like we have all known each other all of our lives. Ms. Keisha Bogan, our VISTA leader in Okolona, has also been great, she dips in and out to check on us and gives us good feedback on our work.

Mr. Raspberry, a Pulitzer Prize winner and the founder BabySteps, recently died. It was a very sad time for the BabySteps staff, the parents that are involved in BabySteps, the schools, the daycares, and just the community as a whole. We came together and help BabySteps put together a memorial day on July 26 for him because his funeral was in Washington and most friends and community citizens could not make it. It was great listening to his friends reflect on the wonderful person he was and how he always had the child's education at heart. They told of how his vision was only first a dream and since he had moved to Washington and became a writer for The Washington Post they thought it would never come true. Mr. Raspberry made it come to life even after leaving his community; he still took the time to make sure he gave back. He did a remarkable thing, a brave act to follow his dream and never give up on it, even when he was already doing great things. I am proud that I was able to be a small part of his program/legacy because it has and hopefully will continue to be a HUGE asset to the children, parents, and families of the Okolona community.

The College of Liberal Arts

My summer has been spent in the College of Liberal Arts helping Dr. Stephen Monroe plan a summer enrichment program for low-income children. It is called Horizons and it is set to launch at Ole Miss next summer. This is actually a national program that is currently operating in 11 states, the main focus of each program being literacy assistance, swimming lessons, and academically enriching activities to prevent the gap in learning that grows during the summer months.

I have had a fantastic time learning about this program and it has been exciting being able to envision it on our campus next year. I recently traveled to Atlanta with Dr. Monroe and Sharon Levine to see two Horizons programs in action and it was amazing. There were fourth graders that were knitting and reciting poetry, third graders that were avidly reading the Tale of Despereaux, and high-school students doing career exploration. It was a truly rewarding experience seeing these kids so engaged in the classroom and knowing that, without a program like this, they would likely be sitting at home or roaming the streets.

In addition to planning Horizons, I have also been working on a few projects for my VISTA position at North Panola High School next year. I have been working to help a woman in Sardis gain non-profit status for the Guardian Angels Foundation, the organization that she started to provide children with somewhere to go during the summer and after school to receive tutoring and take part in other academic activities.

That has been my summer in a nutshell. A truly invaluable experience filled with lots of emailing and paperwork and visiting people!

Life at the Museum

Hey guys,

So instead of boring you all with many a long paragraph about how much we love our job at the UM Museum (really, we do!), Irene and I decided to walk you guys through our lives here at the museum through pictures!  Are you ready? (Hotty Toddy.......... just kidding.)

Most of our time here revolves around the summer art camps that the Museum holds:

Besides teaching (above, Irene is about to teach the class the newest project), we like to have a little fun too:

While Irene is helping more directly with the camps, I get to be the paparazzi - a.k.a., I'm always the one with the camera - and make themed snacks!

Other than the camps, we also work with some daycare camps such as Willie Price and ABC Learning and also with the Museum's Traveling Trunks program, through which we bring a trunk full of art supplies to a non-profit or a school for a project that we will teach to the kids there.  Here we are at E.D.U.C.A.T.E. in Como, MS:

Occasionally our lives tangent away from kids for a moment and we get to help with things like the Art Crawl and putting up the Museum's newest exhibition.  Recently, Irene and I were put to work at Rowan Oak raking and picking up sticks on the grounds in order to ready for the Faulkner Conference.  It was hard work!

(If you can't tell, we LOVE our job!)

We hope you guys have enjoyed walking - and working! - in our shoes for a day!  We are busy pretty much nonstop, but it's been a rewarding experience thus far and we are both looking forward to our last month here.  On a more serious note, my experience here personally as a non-art major has definitely put me in the art world in a way I never have been before and has made me consider moving forward in the museum field after this summer ends. I have a new appreciation for the work that goes into making this machine work, and I have loved being a part of it.

Best,
Audrey (and Irene)