Rhea County Family Members Honored as Even Start Star Learners

 
Mom Melissa Caraway and daughter Lydia got everything started.

Each spring the Tennessee Department of Education’s Office of Family Literacy Programs asks its Even Start Site Directors around the state for nominations for an Even Start Star Learner of the Year. The Even Start Family Literacy Program was established under the United States Elementary and Secondary Education Act (reauthorized in 2000 and 2001 as No Child Left Behind). The program’s purpose is to help break the intergenerational cycle of poverty and illiteracy by improving educational opportunities of our nation’s low-income parents and their children. Even Start targets families most in need because of poverty, illiteracy or limited education, low English proficiency, disability, teen pregnancy, and/or homelessness. However, it differs from other self-help programs because it is designed not only to educate the parents but also to involve them as primary teachers of their young children, to provide age-appropriate early childhood education for the children, and to help the family attain economic self-sufficiency. This year there are 28 Even Start sites across the state, in inner-city, small town, rural, and Appalachian settings. The winner of the award is traditionally honored during the annual Academy for Instructional Excellence sponsored by the Tennessee Association for Adult and Community Education (TAACE). This year’s award will be presented at the Academy Breakfast on July 14.

In previous years, Star Learner nominees were individual parents who demonstrated success in the adult educational, parenting support, and parental involvement aspects of Even Start. But this year Kathy Edwards, Site Director of Rhea County Even Start, in Evensville, Tennessee, offered an unusual recommendation. “I can’t nominate just one,” Edwards stated. “This is a family literacy program, and I have to nominate them all.”  By “all” she meant the Caraways and the Densons. Melissa Caraway, her mother, Kathy Caraway, and her aunt, Carrie Denson, are all students in or recent graduates of the GED program offered at the Rhea County site. Melissa’s young daughter, Lydia Caraway, participates in the Even Start Early Childhood Education program. Amy Denson is Carrie’s teen-age daughter. Since Carrie worked on and completed her GED, she has been able to help Amy with her homework, and Amy has brought up her grades from Cs and Ds to As and Bs. Because Amy is a teenager but not a teen mom, she is technically not an eligible Even Start participant. “But this is what Even Start is all about,” said Edwards. “So we want to recognize her, too.” The State Office agreed, and 2003 Star Learners are the Caraway and Denson families.

Melissa's mom Kathy Caraway and aunt Carrie Denson

According to Melissa Caraway, “The Even Start program is a fantastic place to finish your education. I started school at Even Start after being told that I could bring my daughter, Lydia, with me. I found she could get a head start on her education as well. So, I gave it a try, and one and a half years later we are both still attending and learning.” “I always enjoyed school as a child, but family situations didn’t allow me to continue going,” said Melissa’s mother, Kathy Caraway, who left school at age 15 after completing the eighth grade. “The Even Start program has helped me achieve a goal that has been sitting on the sidelines for 30 years.” She recently received her GED and now devotes time to assisting other Even Start students with their education and to recruiting new participants for the program.

The future belongs to Lydia.

Carrie Denson says, “Even Start has been a great tool for me in gaining my GED. I have both physical and mental handicaps. I completed the eighth grade 30 years ago. I never felt that an education would ever bring any type of accomplishment to my life, but I was wrong. I have a 14-year-old daughter named Amy that has come home many times from school and asked me for help with her homework. I wasn’t able to help her. I felt so useless in that area, especially math. While Kathy [Edwards] was teaching me this past year, I wasn’t only helping myself. I could now help my daughter. I am a teacher in my own home!” A teacher in her own home: indeed, the author of the original Even Start legislation, former Representative William F. Goodling of Pennsylvania, penned those very words when he wrote the Act.

The Tennessee Department of Education offers its congratulations to the Caraway and Denson families, along with best wishes for continued achievement and success in their lives.