Mentorship Through Partnership
The Kiwanis Club of Richmond was nominated this January for the prestigious Presidential Award for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math Mentoring, sponsored by the National Science Foundation for our work with John B. Cary Elementary School.
For the past eight years, Kiwanis has built a strong partnership with Cary, its principal, students, parents and the broader community. In doing so, we took the relationship from a former sporadically-attended, once-a-month reading program to its current level, involving multiple, and now strong, community partnerships, including that of the Virginia Commonwealth University College of Engineering.
As a Richmond Public School, Cary exists in one of the most educationally underperforming school districts in Virginia. When Kiwanis first began expanding our partnership with Cary, the school was unaccredited and starting the school year with its fifth principal in four years. The school had 90 percent minority population and an equal number qualifying for free or reduced lunch. At their first meeting, Richmond Kiwanians John Mahone and Bob Rogers and then-incoming principal Michael Powell committed to a long-term partnership, with a goal of changing the narrative and celebrating success.
This January’s nomination is the evidence of a mission accomplished. The school now has five years of continued full accreditation and is now considered to be one of the best performing schools in the RPS educational system. Today our activities at Cary include weekly reading, judging at science fairs, participating in Earth Day events, creating a nationally recognized eco-campus, partnering with the school’s PTA, taking children to university campuses, giving $20,000 in grants to the school (including the creation of distance learning computer lab with VCU), and establishing the Kiwanis Terrific Kids program to recognize students who try their hardest to achieve academically and become good citizens.
Just one organization, one mentoring approach, or one program could never have met the diverse needs of the students at Cary. As with most Title I schools, the students served at the school are from a variety of backgrounds and levels of academic experience. To help all these children succeed academically and personally, school leadership has cultivated an environment where partnerships with outside organizations can thrive.
The mentoring strategy in place at Cary is one of collaboration, persistence, and respect, along with the opportunity to learn, grow and become better. Our philosophy has been to emphasize personal connections and build trust. Consistency is critical: the simplicity of “just showing up” at one event after another for eight years has created many opportunities.
The partnership reflects our collective commitment to be consistent and sustained. Once the students and staff began to understand Kiwanians would come back again and again to read to them, and that VCU Engineering would be at their school many times a year to talk about STEM, they began to trust the community wants them to succeed.
Principal Powell summarizes this relationship, “Personally, I am thankful for you, and every one of you. You come and read with our children, solve complex science and math problems with our children, play harmonica with our children, eat lunch with our children, plant trees with our children, and make our children laugh more than most would ever dare. I try to say as often as I can, but I want you to know you inspire me. Every day I see you doing that extra something to reach our children.”
Kiwanis Collaborates with VCU
Part of the changed narrative was a constant theme from Principal Powell that every child leaving Cary would be on a path to become “college and/or career ready, without exception.” This mission emphasizes the importance of STEM/STEAM; as such, our collaboration with VCU Engineering (located only three miles from this urban elementary school in the heart of Richmond), has been integral to the school’s success. The partnership between Cary, Kiwanis, and VCU engineering is a model to establish other well-recognized partnerships within our Richmond community.
One of the first large projects created by this collaboration was the “Kiwanis Distance Learning Lab.” This lab was funded by a $10,000 grant from Kiwanis and officially opened in the fall of 2019. Filled with computers and A/V equipment for video conferencing, this lab has seen many Zoom engagements with VCU engineering professors.
As part of the launch, in partnership with Kiwanis as lead, VCU Engineering created a new program called “Engineering in Vision,” led by Jenilee Stanley-Shanks, Director of Outreach, Diversity, and Inclusion, which is charged with growing the participation of underrepresented groups in the field of engineering. This program brings engineering professors, students, and professional engineers into classrooms at Cary every month. This collaborative mentoring effort has allowed the students at Cary to have access to advanced videoconferencing technology, STEM professionals, and higher education leaders. Engineering in Vision allows students to really see and connect with future careers instead of just imaging what they would be like.
Prior to the Distance Learning Lab, students at Cary would not have been able to take advantage of the full Engineering in Vision experience. This lab allows them to ask questions as part of a dialogue with engineering professors.
Many students at Cary do not have parents or family members in STEM fields. Having university professors and staff simply coming to their school to do a STEM activity proved ineffective at helping the students to see themselves in this role. Students were being asked to imagine something completely outside of their frame of reference. Now, Engineering in Vision brings engineering to them. Students got to see real equipment and speak with real engineers on a regular basis. This type of experience helps children relate to the subject matter and helps to lessen the disparity between those who know someone in STEM and those who do not.
The Engineering in Vision program reaches an average of 40 students per session with approximately 16 sessions per academic year. To assess the success of these events, VCU Engineering routinely surveys participating teachers, provides Google Form links for participating student feedback, and works with teachers at the beginning of each semester to improve content delivery. Teachers and students are overwhelmingly supportive of this program: it helps meet Virginia Standards of Learning objectives for career exploration and enables their students to become engaged about science concepts and applications being explained.
In addition to Engineering in Vision, members of the VCU Engineering community also attend a variety of events at Cary each year as a part of the collaborative mentorship approach. This includes participation with Kiwanis activities such as gardening work on the Eco Campus, and school/ PTA sponsored events like the annual STEM Night, the Health and Wellness Fair, and Career Day. Each of these activities bring VCU Engineering students and faculty into the schools to work with students and parents and get them connected to higher education at a young age. Many of these parents sign up to stay connected with VCU Engineering, and some of their children maintain relationships with VCU long after elementary school.
VCU also encourages school classes to come to the VCU campus for visits both to the College of Engineering and to their annual “Capstone” competition, giving them a taste of college life and be exposed to state-of-the-art engineering innovations occurring within three miles of their elementary school.
One of the biggest barriers that this partnership has overcome is the lack of access to technology to communicate directly with instructors. By working together to create technology infrastructure and STEM programming, Kiwanis and VCU Engineering have created something very special for the students at Cary.
Two stories illustrate the utility of the Distance Learning Lab. After attending the first year of Engineering in Vision, fifth grader Khiarae Fuller wrote an essay about her hopes to go to Virginia Commonwealth University to learn about how to “design bionic devices for people who are physically disabled, and help them become more independent.” Khiarae won the grand prize of this central Virginia competition, which included a $2,000 award for a 529 program that was established on her behalf.
The second example was a visit by Air Force Academy Superintendent General Richard Clark, himself a former Cary graduate, to speak to students about the importance of STEM education on their future lives. This visit occurred during the height of COVID-19, where RPS prohibited any visitors to classrooms. The Distance Learning Lab provided General Clark the opportunity to speak very impactfully to both students and staff about the importance of STEM.
The partnership among Kiwanis, Cary and VCU Engineering cannot be overstated. VCU made an extraordinary commitment to partner with Cary and Kiwanis to form a “model program” to identify 21st-century science needs for an elementary school, identify logistics to meet those needs, and make a commitment of VCU professors and engineering students to mentor elementary school children in science.
Volunteering Grows with Eco-Campus
As the Distance Learning Lab was coming to fruition, Principal Powell came up with another idea: the “Cary Eco-Campus No Child Left Inside.” As a result of Powell’s idea, Richmond Kiwanians created partnerships with the Chesapeake Bay Alliance, Manchester Gardens, the Science Museum of Virginia, Maymont Foundation, Greater Richmond Fit4Kids, VCU Engineering, Virginia State University School of Agriculture, Cary’s PTA, two area high schools, and local churches, resulting in five outdoor classrooms, a climate change garden, a butterfly garden, a weather station, an orienteering course and 16 community gardens.
The garden is used to teach students about the importance of growing plants that can be consumed, the science behind the growth of plants, and the experience of “digging in the dirt,” as many of these students don’t have the opportunity to do so at home. The community garden also teaches students about harvesting vegetables and fruits, which end up helping people in the community who are “food insecure.”
Serving as project leader, Kiwanian Debbie Powers recruited more than 100 volunteers to assist in the building and maintenance of the eco-campus, including:
Richmond Parks and Recreation Department/Community Gardens, which provided assistance in building the garden beds and technical expertise about plants;
Tree Lab, which donated and planted 14 seedling trees;
VCU volunteers, who provided labor, plants, and expertise for the gardens;
VCU Engineering students, who assembled the beds and outdoor benches/tables where students eat lunch and have other outdoor classroom experiences; and
Virginia Cooperative Extension Service, which provided Master Gardener volunteers to weed the area, fill garden boxes and lend their expertise.
In addition to Kiwanians, PTA members, neighbors, local churches, Richmond SportsBackers, and students from two private high schools volunteered to bring the eco-campus to life. The campus also features an Eagle Schout project: six additional garden beds and a canopy to provide shade.
These partnerships also led to a “heat island” outdoor classroom where the students learn about the effects of climate change, an opportunity rarely afforded students from an urban or metropolitan area. The Science Museum of Virginia was instrumental in the development of a weather station installed at Cary and from where a local TV station frequently broadcasts live weather updates. Information from the “heat island” is also now shared by Cary students with other elementary school students across the globe through the Distance Learning Lab.
Maymont provided hands-on assistance with the installation of a pollinator garden to teach students about the importance of pollinators in the environment. An orienteering organization in Richmond provided the know-how and set up an orienteering course on the eco-campus to teach students navigational skills using a map and compass.
The Cary Eco-Campus has earned several awards, including being named one out of 27 schools nationally as a 2022 U.S. Department of Education Green Ribbon Award recipient.
Win-Win for Kiwanis, Cary, and Beyond
Because of this volunteering, many Richmond Kiwanians now consider ourselves to be a better organization and better people. We also have a much better understanding of the problems RPS administrators, parents and children face each day. Most importantly, we now have many children at Cary who consider us friends and “elder playmates,” and we have gained new friends and colleagues who are teaching us new skills. It is a “virtuous cycle,” which unquestionably creates future opportunities and synergies.
The collective partnership among Kiwanis, VCU Engineering, and Cary over the past eight years has created a remarkable synergy, with one success leading to create another opportunity. For example, Kiwanians John Mahone, Bob Rogers and Debbie Powers have all been recognized as “Volunteer of the Year” at Cary. Jenilee Stanley-Shanks from VCU Engineering also received the Cary award and was named as one of Richmond’s top “movers and shakers” under the age of 40.
Our expanding community partnerships at Cary have had a major impact on our Club’s ability to impact children and form new relationships in other parts of the Richmond metropolitan community. One example is our Little Free Library programs in the historically underserved Jackson Ward and Carver communities of Richmond. The Kiwanis Club of Richmond is also establishing important relationships and friendships with political and other key community opinion leaders who now know of our successes. A recent example is a January visit to Carver Elementary School by Governor Glenn Youngkin, accompanied by the First Lady, Superintendent of Public Instruction of the Commonwealth, Superintendent of the Richmond Public Schools, and other leaders. The Governor and First Lady read to children, and we discussed with them the results of Kiwanis’ community-wide volunteering, as well as our viewpoints on how to expand the Virginia Literacy Act, an event that was front page news in the Richmond Times-Dispatch the following day.
Principal Powell said it best in his words to our Richmond community:
“I feel that Kiwanis best exemplifies the excellence, creativity, and quality in community service. Many have witnessed and supported Kiwanis’ enthusiasm for working with parents, students, and its teachers on a variety of topics at Cary Elementary School. More specifically, it is their work around STEM/STEAM that deserves the greatest attention. The Kiwanis Club of Richmond has been an outstanding community partner and serves as a national model of what can be done for children.”
As we await the results of our nomination for the National Science Foundation’s Presidential Award for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math Mentoring, Richmond Kiwanians can know that our partnerships at Cary and beyond are doing just what our Club’s mission states: serving the children of Richmond, and the world.