$40,000 Grant Approved by Berea College Appalachian Fund
News Date:
01/12/2010
Hindman Settlement School is pleased to announce it has received approval of a $40,000 grant from the Berea College Appalachian Fund for its 2010 Summer Tutoring Program for children with learning differences. The funds will provide scholarship assistance for children whose families are unable to cover the full cost of tuition.
The 29th Annual Summer Tutoring Program will be held from June 14 through July 23, 2010 on the campus of Hindman Settlement School. The six-week program provides intensive tutoring in reading and math for students with dyslexic characteristics. Students must be evaluated prior to enrollment. Evaluations are conducted monthly at Hindman Settlement School.
The Berea College Appalachian Fund is one of the Settlement School’s Annual Fund Partners and has provided more than $450,000 in grants to the Settlement during the past 60 years. Hindman Settlement School has been affiliated with the Appalachian Fund since the early 1950s when the fund was established through a gift from Herbert Faber and Ruth McGurk Faber. The Fund has supported nonprofits working to improve the general education, health and physical well being of people living in the Appalachian Mountains and surrounding areas.
Learn more about the Summer Tutoring Program.
1943 Alumna Endows Folk Arts Education Program
News Date:
12/04/2009
Sometimes events in our childhood can profoundly affect who we are and what we believe. Hindman High School alumna Marcia Smith Lawrence was born in a house across the road from Hindman Settlement School and raised in Hindman where she was continually exposed to the Settlement’s folk arts programs. Those circumstances led to her lifelong interest in Appalachia’s cultural heritage.
This summer Lawrence, who has served on the Settlement School’s board of directors since 2004, decided to help preserve this heritage by establishing the Marcia Smith Lawrence Folk Arts Education Fund at Hindman Settlement School. The $500,000 endowment will support Folk Arts Education outreach programs at the Settlement School.
Lawrence was among several generations of students from the area who grew up attending folk dances and musical events hosted on Hindman Settlement’s campus. Many Hindman students learned traditional crafts such as weaving and woodworking, or folk arts like dulcimer playing and ballad singing, at the School.
In 1942, when Knott County public schools took over teaching academic subjects, the Settlement School agreed to provide teachers for manual training, domestic science, art, music and recreation. The School continued to provide extension programs in arts and recreation in cooperation with Knott County public schools until 1990 when the program was taken over by the public schools.
In 2006, with the help of her friends, Lawrence donated and raised the funds necessary to reinstate the Folk Arts Education Program. Her goal was to ensure Knott County schools have the resources to teach culturally relevant arts and music. A two-year grant from The Steele-Reese Foundation has allowed the program to continue through 2009. It has been Lawrence’s goal to establish an endowment to support this work in perpetuity.
While the Settlement will need to raise additional funds to fully cover salary and associated expenses for the program, this gift ensures that the efforts of the Settlement School’s founders to keep area students mindful of their heritage will continue for many years to come.
Folk Arts Education Program Improves Arts & Humanities Scores
News Date:
12/03/2009
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| Folk Arts Education Program Director, Randy Wilson, hauls instruments and recording gear for a class at Carr Creek Elementary. Visit “Photo Galleries” for more photos. |
During the 2007 and 2008 school years, Hindman Settlement School’s Folk Arts Education Program provided dance, theater and music instruction to 5th and 8th graders at five Knott County elementary schools (Emmalena, Jones Fork, Carr Creek, Hindman and Beaver) and to all grades at the Settlement’s full-time school, as part of each school’s Arts & Humanities curriculum.
According to the Kentucky Department of Education’s CATS test in Arts & Humanities from 2006-2008, the average score for 5th grade improved by 54.3% and the average for the 8th grade improved by 8.3%. CATS stands for the Commonwealth Accountability Testing System which is the standards-based test given to all Kentucky school children. Scores for 8th graders at Hindman Elementary were not improved. With Hindman excluded, the improvement for 8th graders averaged 16.36% (comparing 2006 to 2008 results.)
“The CATS scores are a validation that the Settlement’s Folk Arts Education Program has had an impact on student learning,” noted Settlement School Executive Director, Mike Mullins.
Lessons included introduction of the dulcimer and recorder for all the grades and teaching rudimentary skills in sight-reading musical notation. Everybody learned a tune or two on these instruments. Students also wrote and performed brief radio skits and stories based on their own experiences. Much of the students’ work has aired on WMMT’s Kids Radio, which is broadcast every Tuesday evening and Sunday morning.
The Settlement School’s folk artist continues to work with students this year, but because testing no longer focuses on 5th and 8th grades, he is working with additional classes. “I get 30 minutes to an hour a week with each class, so the lessons serve only to reinforce what they are learning. It is really up to the classroom teacher to use these lessons as a springboard to the broader curriculum,” commented Folk Arts Education Program Director, Randy Wilson.
“Teachers have told me this work serves the larger purpose of creating excitement, enhancing student creativity and providing hands-on-learning opportunities. These are the kinds of rewards that make students want to come to school and learn,” Wilson noted.
Arizona DAR Presents Handcrafted Violin
News Date:
12/01/2009
As a young man in the Midwest, Gene Drury loved orchestra music and particularly the sound of the violin. After retiring from the tool design/engineering department at McDonnell Aircraft in St. Louis, Drury decided to challenge himself by learning to make violins. After months of studying, he crafted his own violin-making tools, molds and calibration instruments, and began work on his first violin.
Fast-forward 20 years . . . During the Settlement School’s 32nd annual Appalachian Family Folk Week, another young musician benefitted from Drury’s skill and generosity. Gabe Dansereau, who is the son of Randy Wilson and Suzanne Dansereau, was presented with the 137th violin crafted by Gene Drury.Drury has never sold his violins, always preferring to give them to promising young musicians. Drury explains, “I just want to pass along to future generations the lovely music I hear in my head as I stand at my workbench.”
Jo Andress, State Regent of Arizona State Society DAR, was responsible for connecting the Settlement School with Drury. Drury was the 2008 recipient of a DAR Community Service Award from the Havasu Chapter DAR in Lake Havasu City, AZ.
DAR Establishes Alae Risse Leitch Fund
News Date:
09/10/2009
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| Alae Risse Leitch Photo by Lynn Wright |
The Joseph Habersham Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) in Atlanta, Georgia recently made a $5,000 gift to establish the Alae Risse Leitch Fund. The chapter has pledged to make annual gifts until the fund reaches $25,000, at which time earnings will be used to fund programs for children. The chapter has also provided a $1,000 gift to be used toward current children’s programs.
The endowed fund was established to honor and celebrate Alae Risse Leitch, who has been an active member of DAR for 41 years. Mrs. Leitch served as Joseph Habersham Chapter Regent from 1972-1974 and is an Honorary Chapter Regent for life. She served as Georgia’s state Regent from 1986-1988 and is an Honorary State Regent for life.
Quilt Proceeds to Benefit Writers
News Date:
09/06/2009
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| Raffle winner, Brooke Calton Mulhollem, with Diane Gilliam |
The Appalachian Writers Workshop scholarship fund is $1,335 richer thanks to the generosity of poet Diane Gilliam. Gilliam hand-quilted a beautiful basket pattern quilt and donated it to be raffled during the 2009 Writer Workshop. Proceeds of the raffle were designated to support scholarships for writers who wish to attend the annual Writers Workshop but cannot afford tuition. Gilliam is the author of Kettle Bottom, a collection of poems that use the voices of West Virginia miners and their families to paint a portrait of mining in Appalachia.
Maurice Manning: The Gathering at Hindman
News Date:
09/05/2009
Editor’s Note: This year marked the 32nd year for the Appalachian Writers Workshop, a weeklong workshop held each summer at the Settlement School. We asked Maurice Manning, a member of the workshop staff this year, to describe what it is like to take part in the workshop.I had the pleasure of growing up knowing my great-great aunt, Clara Burchell, who lived all her life in Clay County, Kentucky. Aunt Clara developed original varieties of garden seed and sold it in a store in Manchester. The store, not surprisingly, wasn’t a profit-making venture; instead, it was a place folks stopped to pass along a little news or to share a laugh.
Aunt Clara was born in 1882 and lived to be 108. She knew 19th century mountain life—both its pleasures and its hardships; she also knew everybody around, the scoundrels and the local saints, who was kin to whom and how for generations.
A one-eyed black man named Snooks Lyttle ran Aunt Clara’s farm, good bottomland out toward Greenbriar Branch. More than 60 years ago, my father and his mother used to go out to Greenbriar and visit a church that had a lady preacher, which was unheard of anywhere in those days.
All of this might sound like scattered details, but in my mind, everything is organized, fanning out in elaborate patterns that take hold in the folded mountain landscape. These are my deepest roots, full of mystery and fascination, and yes, a little pride. I’ve always felt lucky to be so connected to a place and to feel the depths of time sounding from that place.
It is to drink this old water, to return to the reviving nourishment of our roots, that many of us gather every summer at the forks of Troublesome Creek for the Appalachian Writers Workshop.
Yes, we get serious about literature during the week—the participants in my workshop this year, for example, wrote poems every bit as searching and finely-crafted as the work I see from graduate students. We had an excellent lecture from Ron Rash on the serendipity of doing serious research in order to write accurate imaginative fiction. Every year we have good readings, storytelling, music and square dancing. Late on the final night of the week we’ve taken to passing around the book, to read Jim Wayne Miller’s “Brier Sermon.”
Whether our mountain heritage is firsthand or once removed, we all come to Hindman to understand that heritage—some come to discover it—to engage it and enrich it, and to do our best to preserve it.
For most of us the week is intense and emotional, because most of us have to return to our ordinary lives beset with the concerns of broader American society, which can at times seem wholly ignorant of the value of having roots.
It is hard for me these days not to think the entire Appalachian region is profoundly threatened, first the land itself, and next, the distinct, mythic culture which has grown from that land. However, if we continue to gather and tend this culture through stories and poems, through song and dance, through tales and quilts—and if we hand it on from one generation to the next—we will deepen our roots and find new ways to keep hold of the land that so kindly owns us.
Maurice Manning’s third book of poetry, Bucolics, has just been released in paperback. His first book, Lawrence Booth’s Book of Visions, was selected for the 2000 Yale Series of Younger Poets. A native of Kentucky, Manning teaches at Indiana University and in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. He has a farm near Danville, Kentucky.
Enhanced Communication Plan Includes E-News
News Date:
09/03/2009
Hindman Settlement School has been in the communications business for many years, publishing its first student newspaper, The Mountain Echo, in 1925. In September the Settlement will be launching its first e-news broadcast. The goal is to provide more timely news of Settlement School programs and events to those who use the Internet.
"Several people have asked to be added to our e-mail list because that is their preferred method for getting news," says Jeanne Marie Hibberd, the Settlement's development and communications director. "With the redesign of our web site, we now have the ability to post information quickly. It just makes sense to use e-mail to keep people connected," Hibberd noted.
The Settlement contracted with Flying High Design, Marketing & Creative Resources to assist with the web site redesign. In addition to ease of management, the new site allows staff to post photo galleries, share audio and video files, and offer online registration for events. Flying High donated design services to enable the e-news broadcast.
While the Settlement will still be publishing a paper edition of its newsletter twice a year, the e-news broadcast will offer shorter and more timely news. The hope is this will reduce the number of newsletters mailed each year, saving paper, printing costs and postage.
Sign-up for the e-news broadcast is easy and you can unsubscribe if you change your mind. The Settlement School's privacy policy spells out the details, but basically the school will not sell or share your e-mail address with others.
Settlement School Partners with County to Improve Reading Skills
News Date:
08/11/2009
Hindman, KY—Knott County Superintendent Kim King knows that helping young children achieve proficiency in reading is key to unlocking their educational potential. Hindman Settlement School has been helping children learn to read since it was established in 1902. For the past 28 years, it has specialized in teaching reading to children who learn differently.
The reading labs will employ a multi-sensory teaching approach, which has proven highly effective at the Settlement’s James Still Learning Center. Multi-sensory learning techniques require the simultaneous use of four learning senses: visual, auditory, tactile (touch) and kinesthetic (muscle movement).
For the child with learning differences, the emphasis on systematic development of reading skills has shown early and lasting success. These techniques concentrate on the process of learning and allow the student to use his/her strengths to achieve success and maintain motivation.
Teachers from the Settlement School and public school staff who are specially trained will work closely with students until they master reading skills. This instruction is in addition to the students’ regular classroom instruction.
Individual needs and learning styles will determine each student’s schedule and placement in a reading lab. Placement and schedule decisions will, in turn, determine the intensity and duration of the program for each student.
“We know that early identification, coupled with comprehensive early reading interventions, can reduce the percentage of children reading below the basic level in fourth grade from the current national average of 38% to less than 6%,” says Superintendent King.
“Through Hindman Settlement School’s emphasis on structured and systematic development of reading skill, students have experienced both success and lasting results. We are pleased to offer the same opportunity to students in the Knott County School District,” King said.
“It was a very difficult decision to discontinue our full-time school, but this partnership provides us with an opportunity to do what we do best—teach children to read—and reach between 100-150 students,” Mullins said.
In recent years, it has been a challenge getting students to enroll in the full-time school, Mullins noted. “This partnership allows us to go where the students are instead of them coming to us.” The new program is currently serving 138 students.
Knott County schools and Hindman Settlement School are providing funding for the pilot program. Mullins says the goal is to expand to other schools as resources become available.
Hindman Settlement School has provided educational outreach activities to public schools and surrounding communities for more than 100 years. This new initiative is another example of the Settlement School’s strategy of adapting its services to meet the changing needs of the community and region it serves.
Appalachian Writers find Family, Home at Hindman
News Date:
07/31/2009
Lexington Herald-Leader - Herald-Leader columnist
HINDMAN — This is the season for family reunions in Appalachia, when people come home to celebrate kinship, community and the mountain culture that shaped their lives.
There's a big reunion in Knott County this week. Many of the 100 people there have been attending for years, if not decades. Few are related by blood, but they're family just the same, bound together by Appalachia's storytelling tradition and the magic of words.
Ask participants at the 32nd Appalachian Writers Workshop what it's like, and they use the word "family" a lot. They come for inspiration and advice on the craft from some of the best writers these mountains have produced.
The workshop was started by two Knott County writers, novelist and folklorist James Still, and poet Albert Stewart. Others associated with the annual gathering have included poet Jim Wayne Miller and novelists Wilma Dykeman and Harriette Arnow, author of the 1954 classic The Dollmaker.
"It's a central part of my year that I never want to miss," said novelist Silas House, who was a participant from 1996 to 2001 and has been on staff ever since.
Participants apply and submit writing samples in May. There are always more applicants than spaces; the 102-year-old Hindman Settlement School's cabins can hold only so many people.
Each morning, participants gather in small groups according to interest: poetry, novels, short stories, non-fiction, memoir and children's literature.
When I visited the workshop Tuesday, poet and writer George Ella Lyon was in one room talking about the challenges of publishing books for children. In another room, novelist Karen McElmurray discussed using memoir to explore universal themes. In another, novelists Ann Pancake and Laura Benedict explained storytelling techniques.
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| Karen McElmurray signs a book |
Afternoons are for group readings and individual coaching from the staff of published writers. Everyone eats together, then washes dishes. There's writing time throughout the day, and bull sessions late into the night.
"It's an intense week," said journalist Jason Howard, who is here for a fifth year. "There's a great sense of family, and a lot of spiritual detective work going on."
Mike Mullins helped start the workshop in 1978, soon after he became director of the historic settlement school that now provides literacy and cultural enrichment programs. He marvels at the workshop's success.
"I think there's always a crying need for all of us to express ourselves, to tell our story or a story we've made up," said Mullins.
A few of this year's participants are college students, but most are much older — academics and blue-collar workers, business people, housewives and retirees. Some are beginners; others have published several books.
Mountain life has always been a popular subject in Appalachian literature. But many now write about the mountains themselves and what has been happening to them over the past half-century. Hundreds of thousands of acres have been leveled by mountaintop-removal coal mining or scarred by strip-miners.
"What we do to the land, we do to the people," said Don Askins of Clintwood, Va., whose poetry focuses on the coal industry's environmental destruction.
House and Howard, who both come from coal-mining families, recently wrote the book Something's Rising about opposition to mountaintop removal within the region. Howard also edited a collection of essays, poems and songs called We All Live Downstream.
Many writers here are women who have raised families or had careers. "They come with this full lifetime of experience and a passion to write about it," McElmurray said.
Benedict first came to the workshop 20 years ago. "I had only been writing for a year or so, and I was looking for a cheap vacation," she said.
What she found was a calling — and a husband, Pinckney Benedict, who was on the workshop staff. "We didn't start dating until after the conference, but I gather we scandalized a few people," she said with a smile.
The Benedicts were back this week as staff members. He is a novelist and short-story writer who teaches at the University of Southern Illinois and at writing workshops across the country. She recently published her second novel.
"There's a sense of community, a spirit of cooperation here," she said. "They read a lot, and they all take their work very seriously."
But unlike some other workshops, Benedict and McElmurray said, the writers here don't take themselves too seriously. There's no "staff table" at meals, no caste system based on publishing success.
But Benedict has discovered one advantage to being on staff: "I don't have to do dishes."
Reach Tom Eblen at (859) 231-1415 or 1-800-950-6397, Ext. 1415, or at teblen@herald-leader.com. Read and comment on his blog, The Bluegrass & Beyond, at Kentucky.com.
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