The Star Center Partners with Lincoln Elementary
“It takes a village to raise a child.”
We’ve all heard the phrase. And we have all seen the positive effects of a community working together to help their children succeed. Thanks to the Star Center, the village surrounding the students of Lincoln Elementary just got a little larger.
Last year, this East Jackson school was put on a statewide priority list because of low performance on TCAP scores. As a part of the “turnaround principles” put in place by the school board, Kyle Lutz was named the new principal of Lincoln Elementary and is working hard to implement a number of positive changes.
The first of these changes is a new partnership with a well-known local non-profit, The Star Center. The Star Center has a twenty-seven year history serving the Jackson area by helping students overcome literacy struggles through learning labs and a number of other valuable resources and interventions. The new joint endeavor is launching a Lincoln Reads program and will be installing a learning lab on the school’s campus to serve students. The Star Center specialists intend to work with seventy students per week in Lincoln’s learning lab, as well as work with teachers to help guide students to literacy success.
The program is totally free to students and will be fully funded by donors. One generous donor has agreed to match all donations up to $20,000, which is half of the overall cost to get the lab fully functioning by the first day of school.
As a recent Jackson-Madison County Public School graduate, I benefitted from similar programs and equally driven leaders from my first day of Kindergarten to my graduation day. My classmates and I thrived when we felt that teachers and partners in education were supporting us and doing what they could to help. We felt empowered by the support of our village!
The Star Center is located at 1119 Old Humboldt Road. To learn more about the Lincoln Reads program and to donate, visit the website.
Natalie Pflasterer is a young Jackson native who spends her time helping out at Jackson Escape Rooms. She is a freshman at Union University.
Photography by Kristi Woody.
Don’t let the cold weather keep you cooped up all month! Get out to catch some unique events offered this February for lovebirds and professionals to kids and students.
Don’t let the summer fun end once 731Day passes! August is full of one-of-a-kind entertainment and so many opportunities to support local non-profits in special ways. Check out our top event suggestions.
July is by far one of our favorite times of the year with 731Day on its way, but there’s so much more leading up to that beloved end-of-summer event! Check out all the laughs, music, and other fun in store for this month.
Three. It’s a magic number. It’s the Holy Trinity, symbolic of perfection and completion. There were three essential entities in Greek Mythology ruling the sky, the sea, and the underworld. “Third time’s the charm.” Throughout history, the number three has been revered in nearly every culture, even right here in Jackson. We have three governing bodies that have affected and will continue to affect our education system for years: the city council, the county commission, and the school board.
Maybe it will be a high school production of the musical Camelot. An exhibit of stunning photography by a local class may catch your eye. Perhaps you’ll just want to see the downstairs museum, where dozens of photos, plaques, awards, and costumes recall the acting careers of Dixie Carter and her husband, Hal Holbrook. What will bring you to The Dixie? The Dixie Carter Performing Arts & Academic Enrichment Center is a historical performing arts and enrichment center in Huntingdon, Tennessee.
Life changes quickly. It is the start of another school year. The word “new” seems to permeate all conversations: new clothes, new shoes, new school supplies, new teachers, new schedules, new friends, new experiences, and new adventures. These things seem to give us all a fresh start and a regeneration of life for this season. But for some, this way of life is not a given. We have all heard the old saying, “The one thing in life that is constant is change.”
It is one of the most tense places in the world. A tightly packed geographic meeting of three major religions and a nervous geopolitical flashpoint, the area sits within the inner circle of major foreign policy decisions for most countries. Needless to say, the Old City of Jerusalem does not regularly serve as an exhibition stage for fringe outdoor sports. On May 2, 2016, however, visitors to the Tower of David on the western edge of the Old City saw something unique.
It’s mid-afternoon on St. Patrick’s Day, and West Alley BBQ is a beehive. Residual customers grab a late lunch, employees make preparations in anticipation of a busy evening, and I sit to one side, shuffling through my bag to find a notepad. I am late for the interview, but I had told her I would be. When I walked in, the fellow said she was waiting for me, which I tried not to feel bad about, knowing neither he nor she was upset.
Professor Haelim Allen’s office, like the rest of the art department at Union University, is in beautiful disarray. There are paintings on the walls, half-completed sketches on her desk, various models in differing states of completion on a bookshelf, and of course a second bookshelf overflowing with literature that seems a staple of every teacher’s office. Just outside of her office door is a gorgeous light box which fills the hallway with a sense of peace and calm. The building itself is not by any stretch beautiful, but Professor Allen has transformed her office and the hallway leading up to it into a peaceful, welcoming environment.
Standing in the center of the walkway, I found myself staring anxiously at the building before me: the University of Memphis at Lambuth. It was my first day back to college since graduating from Jackson State Community College a little over a year before, and I reluctantly confessed to myself that I was a bit nervous. I couldn’t quite pinpoint the reason for this nervousness; I had been through the “first day of school” more times than I could count, yet I still felt the same anxiety as I had in previous years.
Lambuth University and its small, historic campus seemed enchanting from the first time I set eyes on it the morning I went to register for my junior year in the fall of 1993. I was breathless at the charm and history that seeped from every leaf and brick. Everything from the old oak trees that stood guard like ancient soldiers to the squirrels that ran around chattering (with an attitude bigger than they were) contributed to the magic feeling of the place.
In May of 2016, there was weeping and gnashing of teeth—or so it would have appeared. Schools rich in personal and communal history were closing. Their doors were shutting for good, and the buildings would just sit there, rotting. There was no clear plan for what would happen to those buildings other than the fact that they wouldn’t house students.
“Are we broken?” I saw those three words at the top of an article a couple of months ago. They were referring to the current political climate in our country. Without delving into specifics, it’s safe to say that our present political situation is a bit perilous. Communication between parties vacillates between accusatory and defensive. The president is being investigated for obstruction of justice relating to a foreign country tampering in our election.
Poet and Nobel Prize winner T.S. Eliot once said, “Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.” This is certainly true for higher education opportunities that may have not been available to many students based on the space in which they find themselves in life. However, community colleges around the country have given a new hope to these students, providing them with an opportunity to “Stay Close, Go Far.” In fact, this is the slogan of Jackson State Community College.
Small Town Big Sound started off with a dream: Keegan Paluso’s desire to use his musical background to help others in West Tennessee realize their potential. What began as this idea soon formed into a community of local artists, each with different and diverse experiences, working together to create original music. Keegan shared with me about how Small Town Big Sound writes, records, and produces the music of our area.
Saturday, April 29, marked the third annual Catalyst Music Fest hosted by the student organization, SMACS (Student Members of the American Chemical Society), from the Union University Chemistry Department. Each year the event raises money to support local charities, with the proceeds from this year going to benefit the Star Center in order to provide scholarships for their programs like art and music therapy.
I am convinced that every young person dreams of leaving their hometown, going to a larger city, and making it “big.” That was definitely a dream of mine. Born in Memphis, I moved to Jackson with my family at the age of four. Jackson is my mother’s hometown. This is when my understanding of what made living in Jackson special began.My siblings and I were in a childcare program, and Jackson Parks and Recreation’s summer program is where I met many friends.
When I think about the vocation of a photographer, I think of the words of Simone Weil, saying that “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” Paying attention is what gets most photographers into their profession. They pay attention and capture a moment and then linger in the darkroom, spending hours waiting to see an image develop from the blank white of a sheet of photo paper, the details slowly emerging in a chemical bath.
The year was 1968. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, Jackson City Hall had separate drinking fountains for "colored" people and "white" people, and Union University and Lane College were still neighbors downtown.It was a crisp fall night in the middle of basketball season. Camille Long was one of only four African-Americans in the bleachers of the Union University gym, including the fellow Lane College student she'd dragged with her.
An expansive flock of slate grey clouds span the sky as I drive along the narrow highway. The landscape rolls beside me, before me. The hills and subtle ridge lines guide the highway that bears my passage. Rural fields are dotted with gigantic cotton gins, dilapidated barns. Small colonies of trailers and rented houses populate gravel side roads, sprouting like branches from the main highway. I am northward bound, driving into an increasingly brisk wind.
"You want to do what?” was the phrase that passed through Shayne Crowe’s mind as his daughter Lauren, a high school student who was studying Spanish, told him she wanted to go to Italy for a year-long exchange. This announcement started a long process with the Rotary study abroad program. The family learned that the program encouraged them to take an exchange student into their home as part of their participation. “It’s actually a really good program,” said Shayne.
After you crank your car down from the sixty-five miles-per-hour speed limit, you’ll make a turn onto a shaded, gravel road, and if you are lucky you’ll catch your first glimpse of the exotic: radiant peacocks, enormous camels, ancient buffalo, and vibrant zebras. In a way, you will feel that you have just stepped into a new world filled with wonder and excitement. And you’ve only just pulled in. Tennessee’s only drive-through safari park is truly a captivating place.
We gathered in a living room of earthen walls painted mint green with a dirt floor covered by tarp. Our hostess sat aside from the group on a bench lining one of the walls so that we could all have a seat in a circle of sunk-in couches and ottomans. Alemaz Bola is a mother of five and an entrepreneur. She wore a head wrap striped with the green, yellow, and red of the Ethiopian flag and sat meekly aside as if to stay out of the way, despite the fact that we came to hear her story.
Madison Academic Magnet High School is presenting the musical Grease this week, directed by Becky Fly. This is truly a Madison Academic Fine Arts Department production. Music Direction has been led by Kristy White (Band Director at Madison) and Lindsey Patterson (Choral Director at Madison), and the Art Department helped with the sets. The production consists of thirty students and ten crew members. Becky likes getting students involved in theatre because they learn more than just acting skills.
“We help any person with any disability realize their potential.” Star Center President Dave Bratcher’s summary of the non-profit is simple, but a tour of the facility will quickly show just how far it reaches into the community. Since their start in 1988, they have grown into a thriving center serving a wide range of clientele by listening to the needs of the community.
When I first moved to Jackson, my only regret in my college choice was (what seemed to me) the lack of natural beauty in the university’s town. As a Middle Tennessee native and an East Tennessee enthusiast, I grew up enthralled by the beauty of Tennessee’s landscape: the rolling hills, slow-moving rivers, and Blue Ridge Mountains in the east. Hence, my relocation to West Tennessee was, quite literally, flattening.
Exit 85: West Tennessee School for the Deaf. I take this exit off of I-40 every week to go to my English lessons. The exit sign catches my eye (and not just because it is also the exit for Christmasville Road, which I think is a pretty fantastic name for a road). Here is some background to the significance of my road sign musings: my youngest brother, Jack, is hard of hearing. After we found out about his hearing loss, our family moved several hours away in order to be near a good school for him.
A few months ago, I sat across a table from a four-year-old named Thomas. He and I were waiting on his dad who was in the gym coaching my son and the rest of a high school church league basketball team. I had some paper and markers, so we began to draw. Thomas drew his brother, where he lived, a mystery map, the gate to his house, the family car, his mom, his dad, a basketball, a fish in the water, and much, much more. Did I know this because he was a gifted illustrator?
I still remember my last day of high school. I remember leaving the parking lot and listening to the Dave Matthews song “Number 41,” and I still remember the lyrics that were blaring from the speakers of my Nissan Maxima. “I will go in this way, and I’ll find my own way out. . . .” They seemed poignant at the time, though I’m not sure in what way exactly. As a matter of fact, I’m not really sure that I even liked Dave Matthews. I think I wanted to like Dave Matthews because all my friends liked Dave Matthews.
The Jackson Fire Department is in the process of constructing an important safety training tool for our community, the Life Safety House. The simulator, located on Conalco Drive, consists of three different rooms and will give community members tips and information on properly handling threatening situations in the home. As guests walk into the converted trailer, they will see a classroom where the instructors can give school groups a presentation on safety in the event of fire or natural disaster.