By Sheri Miyamoto
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The Fort Mojave Indian tribe leads celebration participants in a spirit dance.
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If no one cared if kids showed up at school, and if there was no connection between teachers and parents, and if lack of communication, involvement and purpose was a common issue, what would you have? In Needles, it was a dying community.
But some people actually did care. What began with a handful of teachers asking for help grew into a community coalition of caring. The Needles Teachers Association formed a Community Outreach Coalition that grew from six teachers to over 40 participants, including administrators, school board members, community businesses and members of four Native American tribes.
"The association's role was to get things started," says NTA President Laurie Scully. Then it had to get out of the way. Once it unleashed the community's power, there was no stopping it.
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Members of the community visit displays set up on the Needles High School football field. |
Within four meetings, the coalition identified the problems and came up with workable solutions to address them.
As a way to motivate all members of the education community to get more involved, the coalition laid the foundation for a community event that would build better relationships between students, parents, community members and the schools.
They organized a Parent Shadow Day at every school site in the district, followed by a Parent/Shadow/Schools Celebration on the high school football field. More than 3,400 community members participated.
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Dennis Callaway and his daughter Mary work on a math problem together. |
At Needles Middle School, 12-year-old girls huddled with their fathers as they worked on math problems. The dads invariably whipped out their calculators when the going got tough.
At Needles High School, Larry Roesberry sat in the back of the classroom watching his grandnephew, Chad. "When I went to high school, I rarely went to class," he said. He showed up at Parent Shadow Day "because Chad asked me to."
Parents went home with a parent resource notebook filled with information ranging from schedules to grade level requirements and homework tips. Students were given a family homework kit filled with pencils, markers, scissors and other essentials. Except for the plastic kit containers and the binders, everything was donated by businesses in the community, even the printing and copying.
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NTA President Laurie Scully (right) and her mother Lyn Parker hand out family homework kits. |
"The event made it easy for parents to get all the information they needed in one place," says Scully.
The culmination of the day was a barbecue on the high school football field. School board members welcomed citizens as they took turns slinging burgers and dispensing drinks donated by local businesses. Representatives from Bank of America, the California Highway Patrol, the Needles Chamber of Commerce, the San Bernardino County Fire and Sheriff's departments, and the U.S. Department of Transportation staffed display tables and shared information on their services.
The Fort Mojave Indian tribe invited spectators to join in a spirit dance, which spread across the athletic field.
With few family activities available within Needles, drawings were held for railroad trips to the Grand Canyon. The idea behind the trips was to continue to build the fledgling relationships started on Shadow Day. Sponsored in part by the Fort Mojave tribe, the trips were made possible by grants and more than $16,000 in donations.
The Needles Project is proof that a small group of committed people can change the world, say organizers Rita Karr and Lark Pettit.
Because a handful of teachers cared, Needles is a better place for the whole community.
