Several members of the Bluffton Police Department recently visited NOC’s Onyx Learning Center in Bluffton to build positive relationships with children and families living in the ONYX Apartment complex. Members of the Police Department helped children complete their homework and also reinforce reading skills. The children were happy to meet members of the Police Department in their neighborhood.

NOC appreciates these busy first responders spending time with the children. This was an important initiative for building a partnership between the community and law enforcement.

 

NOC’s learning centers provide children an enabling environment for academic achievement through improved skills in math, reading, and language arts. Additionally, NOC’s centers provide children a platform for positive social and emotional integration and sense of community. While they are at the centers, children can leave behind the stress and anxiety resulting from the coronavirus pandemic. NOC’s after school learning program has become an important option for children in the absence of face-to-face learning.

NOC would like to open its six learning centers for additional hours of learning for high-risk children while local schools have adopted a hybrid learning program. With help from the Beaufort County School District, these children could receive support at NOC’s learning centers to facilitate their learning needs and requirements. But without such support, including help from other non-profit education service providers, many high-risk children will fall further behind academically.

 

 

NOC welcomes Madeline Helser-Howard as its new Executive Director.

Madeline comes to NOC from the Beaufort County Library System where she spent the last five years serving the community as a Senior Librarian and Youth Services Coordinator. During her tenure with the Library she created the collaborative “Summer @ Your Library,” a joint program between the Beaufort County School District and Beaufort County Library System. She also re-imagined and expanded library services to the YMCA Migrant Education Program and taught many free parent reading workshops through Born to Read, Inc. She holds a MSLIS from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and has over fifteen years’ experience serving youth and their families in programs that promote self-empowerment through education.

Madeline lives in Beaufort with her husband Josh, surrounded by pets, books, and musical instruments.

Madeline will help NOC expand its mission and outreach programs locally and nationally, so that more people can realize economic and social progress and a better quality of life.

ONYX Program Manager Yury Bowlds and her husband, a member of the military who has just returned from a tour in Syria, will be relocating to Virginia in early September.  Yury will certainly be missed by the children, family, and NOC staff.

Neighborhood Outreach Connection has had a presence at ONYX (Simmons Cay) Apartments in Bluffton since 2014, providing after-school and summer education programs, workforce development, and health screenings to low-income residents. Following a temporary closure in 2019, Yury Cruz Bowlds stepped in as program manager. In her words, she had to, “practically start from scratch,” to rebuild and reopen the center. To meet this challenge, Yury’s main goal was to hire and train an effective team that would connect with the families they were serving – a goal that she successfully met. 

 

Looking back on her time as program manager, Yury believes her greatest achievement was the relationships she formed with her team, with the school district, and with the families. These relationships allowed her to overcome a variety of obstacles. For example, one of her greatest challenges was determining how best to serve a student named Pedro who dealt with autism and language problems. She says, “dealing with a student with special needs requires a lot of education and training that I didn’t have.” However, Yury’s commitment to Pedro and her strong collaborative skills allowed her to specialize the ways in which she and her team communicated with him. When speaking to Yury about Pedro, the passion she has for NOC’s mission shines through. She says, “he is one of those cases that I truly feel like we did something for this boy.” Pedro’s success is not an unusual outcome for students who attend NOC programs. 

 

Another ONYX success story that Yury described relates to a student named Maria. When Maria first came to the program, she could not speak any English and was struggling in school. Now, Maria is fully bilingual, a high school graduate, and will be attending USCB on scholarship in the fall. She volunteers at NOC Onyx in what is nothing short of a full circle moment. When asked what advice she would give to the next program manager at ONYX, Yury emphasized the importance of connection with the families, especially the mothers. Yury’s connection with the mothers drove her to always go above and beyond in her role. Most of the families served by the ONYX center are living in poverty. Due to this, when they are faced with emergency health situations, they have little to fall back on. Yury remembers a time when a mother had an appendectomy, but was unable to find a ride home from the hospital. Without enough money to call a cab, she was faced with few options. Because the families at ONYX trusted Yury, they reached out to her to find the mother a ride. It is in situations like this that the effectiveness of Yury’s approach as program manager shines through. 

 

Going forward, NOC Onyx must continue to emphasize the importance of communication with the families it serves. This emphasis on communication will allow the center to continue improving the academic progress of the students. Yury reiterates that, ‘it is so important that we continue to focus on students’ weaknesses and reinforce those areas of learning.” Weaknesses cannot be targeted without a focus on communication and connection.

2020 has been a difficult year for everyone because of COVID-19. Schools were closed throughout the country since mid-March 2020, which has had devastating impact on the education of children.

Remote learning, using e-learning platforms administered by local schools, has emerged as a crucial avenue for children to continue learning. This has enabled some children, especially those with access to personal computers and the internet combined with support at home, to engage in structured learning managed by local school systems and thus build skills in math, reading, language arts, social studies, and science. Unfortunately, many high-risk children who come from low-income households and underserved neighborhoods have not been able take advantage of this option. Since mid-March, many of these children have become disconnected with local schools. As a result, these children have already lost 50% to 75% of the learning skills, especially in reading and math, that they acquired over the previous 12 months of schooling.

NOC operated its summer learning program from June 8 to July 30, 2020, to help high-risk children from underserved neighborhoods to build skills in math, reading, and language arts with the help of teachers from local schools, NOC field staff, and experienced volunteers.

Clearly, if high-risk children are to be successful in virtual learning in Fall 2020, they need access to personal computers and the internet. They must also master the skills needed to engage in e-learning under the direction of teachers from local schools at a site that is safe and conducive to e-learning.  To this end, NOC has offered free of charge a two-week summer program for 40 children from August 10 to August 20, 2020, at its two Bluffton learning centers to help high-risk children.

The Summer Virtual Learning Camp has operated with the following objectives.

(a) Provide children the opportunity to engage in e-learning in a safe and enabling environment.

(b) Assist children in understanding the requirements of e-learning (following instructions, review of materials, timely interaction with teachers and scheduled classes, completing assignments in a timely manner)

(b) Help children develop the skills and culture of virtual learning in the absence of a classroom setting and direct interaction with the teacher.

(c) Allow children and teachers to connect effectively to ensure new skills and concepts are covered and learned effectively by the children at their grade levels.

(d) Ensure that children are ready to participate with ease in any remote learning situation in the 2020-2021 academic year.

(e) Ensure that the parents are fully involved in the children’s education and have an understanding of virtual learning.

These children will be well prepared to participate in BCSD’s virtual learning set-up for all children in public schools.