Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/517095
Inspiring students If you're at Immokalee Middle School in southwest Florida and you ask for the teacher with the CMU flag, you'd think the answer would be easy. It isn't. Which one of the seven classrooms do you want? That's right – there are seven first-year teachers at Immokalee who proudly display the CMU flags they received at commencement. They belong to Alessandra Callender, Kelly Trotter, twins Samantha and Ashley Adams, Jake Simmons, Jacob Burtch, and Ashley Simon. And more than 20 other CMU alumni teach throughout the southwest Florida school district. The well-trained teachers from CMU are a big hit in Florida, says Callender, who teaches eighth grade pre-algebra. One of her students was labeled as a particularly low achiever, based on a standardized test. Callender tutored the student after school and paired him with the highest achieving students in class for extra help. "The last test he took, he got a 96 percent," she says proudly. "I called him up to my desk to tell him the good news and he said, "Ninety-six percent? What did I miss? I thought I got a hundred.'" She laughs. "That was just awesome," she says. Callender infuses her teaching with creativity, launching algebra scavenger hunts and encouraging students to get up and walk around the room, because movement stimulates learning. She picked up these techniques from CMU education professor Norma Bailey, who retired last summer after an award-winning career. "I know I didn't just get here on my own," she says. "I'm here because of Central." Nearly 100 percent of her mostly Hispanic and Haitian students live in poverty and speak English as a second language, she says. College isn't a given for them. "When my students ask me about my CMU flag, it always starts a conversation about college, and I love that," Callender says. "It's right in their face, in all of our classrooms. It will always hang in my classroom. All these kids have CMU in their heads now." • Fostering community Holly Hansen-Watson knew she'd hang her CMU flag on the front of her Mount Pleasant house. That flag was hard won. Hansen-Watson, 41, chipped away at her degree for 10 years, working on her entrepreneurship major two or three classes a semester while she raised her daughter, Sarah, and worked full time in campus dining. Her plan was to one day open her own gourmet popcorn store. But things don't always go according to plan. One day she responded to a volunteer opportunity to drive area foster kids to Midland for classes that teach them life skills. "I started connecting with them," she says. "We sang along to the car radio. We talked about how their day was going." As she researched the needs of foster children, she discovered Foster Closet of Michigan, a nonprofit that provides clothing, toys and furniture to children in foster care. But there was no chapter in Isabella County, so Hansen-Watson started one in her garage. Donors deliver items to her house, where volunteers sort and clean them. She hopes fundraising efforts will help her move the operation to its own location soon. "These kids deserve to go to a real place," she says. "Not just my garage." Helping youngsters in foster care is bittersweet, she says. "It just breaks your heart to think about it. When they're taken from their homes, they often have just minutes to gather what they can. They show up at their foster homes with whatever they were able to grab at that moment." When they arrive at her garage, she says, they're still in a bit of shock. Hansen-Watson tells the story of a teen boy who acted tough and aloof as he selected clothing. Then she saw him in the back of the car, hugging a stuffed animal he chose. "That really tugged at my heart," she says. The experience has moved her so much, she and her husband, Mark Watson, became licensed as foster parents and now have three foster teens living in their home. When she gets calls from people for directions to her house, she offers a landmark. "I say, 'It's the house with the CMU flag,'" Hansen-Watson says. "I'm proud of the people at CMU. As soon as word got out about what I was doing, I had student volunteers every Sunday, right from the get-go. Everybody there comes together." 19 centralight spring '15