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Kids From Red Bank Middle School Learn About Careers At VNA Of Central Jersey
By Ryan Fennell
RED BANK - Seventh grade students from Red Bank Middle School took the short trip across town to the Visiting Nurse Association of Central Jersey for a presentation on the services the organization offers, the challenges senior citizens face, and the various careers available to those that enter the profession.
The students learned about what the VNACJ offers people that are coming home from a hospital stay, people that need assistance in their home, and the great lengths the VNACJ takes to ensure that people receive the treatment they require in order to remain in their homes. They also experienced, through an activity designed to mimic the daily struggles of the elderly, the challenges of an aching body, limited mobility, and failing eyesight and hearing loss.
More importantly, this trip was one of many the students of RBMS have experienced through a national academic program recently incorporated into the Red Bank school system known as AVID.
AVID stands for Advancement via Individual Determination and is designed to "prepare students in the academic middle for four-year college eligibility" according to the organization's website.
AVID was founded by Mary Catherine Swanson in 1980 in San Diego, California as a way to incorporate the influx of inner city students into the school system after the federal court ordered the city's schools be desegregated.
According to the organization's website, AVID is a philosophy that holds that by holding students accountable to the highest standards while providing academic and social support, the students will rise to the challenge.
Twenty-nine years later AVID has spread across the nation to 45 states and internationally to 15 countries.
"AVID is an elective class that meets everyday and provides academic support in the areas of Language Arts, Math, and Science as well as organizational support," said RBMS eighth grade AVID teacher Melissa Osmun. "It also provides exposure to colleges and careers through guest speakers and various site visits" such as the trip to the VNACJ. "It provides preparedness and readiness for success.
According to Osmun, this is the first year that the program has been offered to seventh grade students in the middle school but has been previously offered to eighth graders.
"Offering it to the seventh grade students gives them the potential to been in the course for two years," Osmun said.
AVID provides participating schools with a curriculum derived from the WICR method, which stands for writing, inquiry, collaboration and reading Osmun said. "AVID focuses on what is going on in the classroom and supports academics and is usually activity based or based on collaboration," Osmun said. "It is not extra work."
The program focuses on note taking techniques as well as the use of binders to teach organizational skills and puts a strong emphasis on volunteering within the community.
It was obvious during the presentation at the VNACJ that the students at RBMS have taken strongly to the AVID program, which was evident in the first several questions the students had for the professionals at the VNACJ.
One student asked how the current economic crisis was affecting the VNACJ and the services it provides while another student asked what the overall cost was to send a nurse to a patient's home. Questions about how old you needed to be to volunteer and in what ways a person could volunteer were also at the forefront of the children's minds.
Pauline DePalma, Manager of Volunteers at the VNACJ, informed the children that there are volunteer opportunities for people of all ages and that the VNACJ has a Junior Volunteer program. DePalma had the children create a simple craft by turning a pen into a decorative flower that can still be used for writing. The flower pen idea was the first craft created to go toward the Gifts From the Heart Fund that the VNACJ operates. The Gifts From the Heart craft group makes the pens and sells them at craft fairs with the proceeds going toward the fund DePalma said.
DePalma also referenced a student at Red Bank Catholic High School who was a youth volunteer with the VNACJ and worked with the school to organize several bake sales, raising over $1,000 for the fund that ultimately bought a Wii game system for residents of a local nursing home.
"The joy that was on everybody's faces playing the Wii at the home," DePalma said. "Those are the things I enjoy most in my career."
The students were also exposed to what new employees and volunteers of the VNCJ go through before going to work with patients by adorning dark glasses, over-sized gloves, and earplugs while trying to button a shirt.
The exercise is designed to simulate challenges various patients' face on a day-to-day basis to give the employee or volunteer a better sense of what the patient is going through.
The seventh grade AVID class, taught by Chris Ippolito, is also in the midst of organizing a winter food and clothing drive in association with Lunch Break in Red Bank. The students have recently completed a videotaped public service announcement about the drive and have posted it to the school's Web site. The drive is currently underway and will continue through March. Donations can be made at the Red Bank Middle School on Harding Road.
