ENHE Board Member Kathy Hoover-Dempsey, Ph.D. shares the top three reasons why she supports East Nashville Hope Exchange:

After I retired from Vanderbilt University in 2013 (following 40 years of teaching and research in Psychology and Human Development, which I loved), Amanda Goodwin, a wonderful faculty member in the Department of Teaching and Learning, asked if I’d be interested in joining the Program Committee of the East Nashville Hope Exchange.

My answer? A most definite “Yes!!” I’d heard of this remarkable organization that offers notable support for young children’s literacy development, and I was especially intrigued by its focus on offering many kinds of support for families’ active engagement in their children’s literacy learning. I joined, became a member of the Program Committee, and quickly learned that ENHE was a most remarkable program!

​I have been so impressed with many, many aspects of the program over these years, but three of its remarkable strengths really stand out for me. Each has been strengthened by excellent Executive Directors, excellent teachers and staff, a most thoughtful Board of Directors, and many individuals from the broader Nashville area who are committed to supporting the ENHE program with their talents, energies, and passion for developing literacy among children in the families we serve. These elements include the following:
 
Monthly Saturday Workshops for parents and children throughout the school year
These Saturday sessions include discussions with parents about the many different ways of supporting their young children’s literacy development (or “learning to read and enjoying it!”) In these monthly sessions, parents learn and discuss:

• The importance of their children’s learning to read and the equal importance of parents “being there” for their children as they learn to read—so that their children know that their growing reading skills are supported and valued within their family;
• Time, when possible, for parents to read and enjoy books together with their children (drawing especially from the many books that our children are given to take home from ENHE’s summer program!);
• How to develop consistent and constructive routines with their children at home, so that they can accomplish their children’s learning goals, and focus on activities that are often so helpful in supporting the development of a positive sense of self-esteem, reading skills, and purpose as they learn to read.

 
Bringing adults with remarkable skills and interests from the broader Nashville community to engage with, teach, and offer great encouragement for our students’ reading and learning during our ENHE summer school program
Our guests (usually one for each day of our summer program!) engage very actively with our children in many different ways—and our students respond with great enthusiasm to the different subjects, interests, talents and information our guests share with them! Our ENHE staff and invited guests are very encouraging of our students’ questions, e.g., about their careers, how they decided to do this work, what’s most fun about it. These conversations add so much to our students’ awareness of the many options for the very interesting work to be done in this world! A sample of these include:

• Guests who bring and read and discuss children’s books, welcoming our students’ questions about the stories, encouraging discussion, and being very encouraging of students’ responses, questions, and ideas about the story(ies) they’ve heard;
• Other guests bring music, singing with our students, encouraging and answering questions about the songs, many of which have been written by our guest performers;
• Others bring dance, engaging our students in learning particular dances, and sometimes simply ‘dancing to the music’ as one wants to!
• Still others bring art, engaging our students in drawing and painting pictures—sometimes very large ones, as was the case during our 2017 Summer Program, when students’ remarkable pictures were posted for some time on fencing adjoining a major thoroughfare in East Nashville, for all driving by to see and admire!

 
ENHE’s focus on taking our children into the broader Nashville community to experience events and places that are very interesting, intriguing, and often inspiring! For example:

• Going to the Nashville Zoo to see and learn so much about the animals there—where they come from, what their habits are, what they like to eat, and how the young ones play when they’re not sleeping or just staying close to their Mom;
• Another sweet example: Going to a Nashville printing press company to find out from experts how newspapers are made—and meeting the people who will be printing the newspaper that our students create near the end of the Summer Program every year for our families and all others interested in our summer of work and fun!
• And one of my favorites from the past summer: Our project that engaged our students, teachers, and other wonderful helpers in the development of a Lemonade Stand for a fund-raising event in the East Nashville community. This project engaged our children in thinking about four different recipes for really good lemonade, making and testing each recipe, selecting the one they liked best, creating attractive signs (e.g., “We have Good, Cold Lemonade for sale!”), getting the signs up and posted for the event . . . and being part of the excitement of selling so much of our good, good lemonade!

 
Why do I support ENHE? Because just as I wanted, so many years ago, to engage in teaching and learning activities that make a positive difference for children in this world (and loved doing so!), I continue to love being engaged, supportive, and encouraging of the services and learning opportunities offered by the remarkable East Nashville Hope Exchange Program that are often life-changing for our children and for their families.

​From perseverance to entrepreneurship to catching bugs, East Nashville Hope Exchange board member Emily Pendergrass shares with us the important role books played during her childhood. Emily currently serves as Director of Reading Education in the Department of Teaching and Learning at Vanderbilt University. She writes:
 
“What was your favorite book to read as a child?” It’s a daunting question for a person that loves to read. As a child that moved often, a shelf of favorite books was a constant in our newest home. I loved Judy Blume’s books; especially The One in Middle is the Green Kangaroo, Blubber, and Are You There God It’s Me Margaret. These books were funny and insightful to my child brain. I also loved the Carolyn Keene’s Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys Super Mysteries, where the detectives teamed up together to solve mysteries. One of the best was the first Double Crossing in the series involving the detectives trying to figure out who was selling CIA secrets on the cruise ship. Through the adventures in these novels, I was able to explore the world.
 
Another favorite was Kid Power by Susan Beth Pfeffer. This book was inspiring to me because Janie, the main character, decided to complete some odd jobs around her neighborhood in the hopes of bringing in extra money for her family. She advertised, became an entrepreneur, and when her business grew beyond her capabilities, she hired others to help her complete the jobs. To this day I remember how Janie and her friends learned to keep bugs out of the garden — a concoction of fruit juice, water, and sugar that attracts the bugs away from the plants. The bugs fall in the jar and drown in the sugary mix. Currently, I have a sugary mix in a mason jar in my East Nashville backyard… the insects fly in and never get out!
 
Looking back at this list helps me to see that many of the stories were about perseverance and finding solutions to problems—as a child, that knowledge was instrumental to my development. Persistence and creativity for problem solving are important to accomplishing one’s goals in life.

Now, as a parent and as a teacher, my favorite books to read aloud to children are in the same vein. I love picture books like Something Beautiful by Sharon Dennis Wyeth or The Pirate of Kindergarten by George Ella Lyons. For longer read aloud books, I turn to How to Steal a Dog by Barbara O’Connor or The Family Under the Bridge by Ann M. Martin.
 
But my very favorite book of all time to read aloud is the one that a child hands me.

East Nashville Hope Exchange board member Woods Drinkwater shares with us his first memory of literacy. Woods is an attorney serving as a law clerk to the Hon. Joe P. Binkley Jr. in Nashville. He demonstrates for us the powerful connection that can be made between readers: 

I’ve been reading so long it would be a fool’s errand to conjure up the earliest memory I have of sounding out letters to form words and stringing together words to form sentences. I realized early on that reading opened up possibilities of new worlds and new experiences. It was many years into my ability to read, however, before I first understood the real impact of literacy.
 
Literacy, to me, means more than understanding words on a page. Literacy is the door through which we walk the path to communication and understanding. My earliest memory of this kind of communication and understanding comes from a mid-August night. With the first day of third grade right around the corner, it was all I could do to hurriedly finish my summer reading. The final book on my list was Wilson Rawls’ timeless Where the Red Fern Grows. With a heavy sigh on the twilight of summer vacation, I started into it.
 
My mother, also having never read it, suggested we read it together chapter for chapter. Realizing I would only have to read half of the book, I eagerly agreed. And so we set out, determined to read at least a few chapters that evening. What ensued over those next hours taught me nearly everything I know about the power of literacy.
 
Page after page, it became evident that the real experience was not necessarily the story contained within the pages, but the act of reading the chapters aloud to one another. By doing so, we shared a common experience. We paused briefly between chapters to discuss the story and recap the plot. 
 
As the story wore on and it became more difficult to read through each chapter (those of you that are familiar with the story know that a box of Kleenex is an essential accessory to the final act), trading the book back and forth occurred more frequently. By the end of the night, we finished the book. 
 
The simple act of reading a story together taught me what can be shared through literacy. It is more than the meaning of the words on a page -- it is community. Literacy can not only open windows to the outside world, but also can build bridges between readers.

East Nashville Hope Exchange Board Member Kevin Bradley shares with us how he celebrates literacy in his everyday life. Kevin is the Assistant Director of Accounting for the State of Tennessee Treasury Department:
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September 8th is International Literacy Day. It is a day intended to stop and recognize the importance of literacy to us as individuals and to society as a whole. For most of us, reading is something we take for granted. We read signs, magazines, books, websites, and work memos. Every single day we read without ever stopping to think about what our lives would look like or where we would be socially, professionally, or personally without that ability. As part of International Literacy Day I stopped to think, how do I celebrate literacy in my everyday life?

I always hated reading as a child. It was something my teachers and parents forced me to do but I could never understand why it mattered or why everyone acted like it was so important. Unfortunately, this attitude remained in high school and into college. Reading was something I had to do to get through school and pass assignments, but was never something I enjoyed or truly appreciated. It was years after college when I randomly decided I wanted to read a book. I cannot recall why I had the sudden urge or even what book I decided to pick up but regardless, I sat down and started reading. Little did I know that I was embarking on a life-long passion.

I now read dozens of books each year on almost every topic imaginable. Reading gives me the opportunity to learn about topics such as economics, finance, history, leadership and religion, or to simply appreciate a great story. Reading transformed from something I labored to do to something I truly enjoy. By making the choice to pick up that first book, I opened the door to so many new experiences and ideas. Now I can hardly imagine going a day without reading. Each morning as I sit, drinking my morning coffee and reading, I truly appreciate literacy and all the doors it has opened for me.

The way I celebrate literacy every day is by not taking that ability for granted and by choosing to make reading a priority in my life. How do you celebrate literacy?