Andrews – Nicole Phelps, who teaches English language arts to sixth-graders at Andrews Middle School, has a personal interest in the devastation Hurricane Helene brought to western North Carolina in late September.
Having taught previously at Owen Middle School in Swannanoa, Phelps felt there was something more to do to help her former colleagues and the community. So she helped spearhead a donations drive for the whole school to participate in.
Phelps took the gathered goods on Nov. 2 to Swannanoa. She was not prepared for what she saw, even after seeing video online.
“There are just no words, and I love words. But there are none for the sheer impact, the place I lived and taught for 11 years. Gone. Just so much gone,” Phelps said with a slight shudder and quiver in her voice.
While Phelps was quick to come to the aid of her former community, she has loved the last three years at Andrews Middle.
“We are a family here, we strive for that, and that begins at the top and goes through every level here, so for my other family I felt that I had to something,” Phelps said.
“Here at Andrews Middle, we have a united staff and a heart for the whole child, very much like Owen’s spirit as well. We’re invested wholly in every kid.”
Drawn to the Andrews area by the similar landscape of a long valley ringed by scenic mountains, Phelps can’t help but see similarities between Andrews and Swannanoa. She wants to cultivate that same feeling in her students by reaching out to her former school to open a dialogue for what each area can offer the other in terms of resilience and strength.
While the water of local lakes drew Phelps to western North Carolina, she wants to focus on the similarities of the areas, as both communities are low-income areas. With Owen being the smallest school in Buncombe County, she feels sometimes there’s more to being the underdog than the biggest frog in a bigger pond.
“The kids here are also used to hardships of different sorts. One of our reading assignments this term is ‘Bud Not Buddy,’ which recounts a young man’s struggles with school and family,” she said. “Now that the Owen students are living through struggles and hardships, it provides a bridge to forging relationships to strengthen our sense of community.”
In a rubric geared toward learning letter writing in general, Phelps and other sixth-grade English language arts teachers are using the particular to engage their students with Owen Middle to offer a bonding of both circumstance and situation.
Phelps began the introduction to the assignment with a slide show of Owen Middle’s campus both before and after Hurricane Helene’s path through the community. Her slides showed both students and teachers along with a former Andrews Elementary employee, Sherri Hammond, who students recognized with cries of “Miss Sherri” when her photo popped up on the screen.
Unfortunately, Phelps said she didn’t overlap with Hammond’s arrival at Owen Middle, but she knew this was one more sense of connection between the schools. That spurred her to consider steering the letters toward sharing a broader sense of community for students at both institutions.
The outline for the letter includes both opportunities for introductory information, such as name and grade and school mascot, as well as space to detail activities and hobbies enjoyed both at school and in the students’ personal lives.
From there, the letters had personal touches, such as relating current studies in each class, extracurricular activities, favorite teachers and classes, concluding with a heartfelt sentiment regarding the disruption of Owen Middle’s school year by the storm as well as an opportunity to give an encouraging and positive message to the students.
Phelps describes the objectives of the lesson as “a two-part lesson in studying the art of communication, along with the finesse of sharing personal information in order to decipher what other students would want to read and write about.”
Fortunately, Phelps said Owen Middle sustained little damage other than the basement was flooded. They were able to salvage the rest of the school, with the students’ return fostering a sense of normalcy in abnormal circumstances.
“They didn’t lose a single student, either, or teacher. Everyone was accounted for,” she said with a visible shoulder-shrugging release of relief. “We have students facing that as well as Owen does. But with the storm, there’s another facet to the difficulties of life.
“Hopefully, this letter-writing exercise will offer the Owen students encouragement in a difficult situation and let them know that others care so about them. For our students, I hope it will broaden their horizon to think about the impact of such devastation so close to our homes.”
With a hopeful grin, Phelps shared what it was like to take a truckload of donated supplies back to her former school by describing how Andrews and Owen are similar in more ways than a curriculum.
“There’s a pool in the middle, between Owen and the high school, where the community has been taking showers. So many needs have changed since the storm. While no lives were lost for the Owen community, many homes were, so there’s no home to take supplies and drop off,” she said.
“We’ve been able to reach people on social media, people from other states even who’ve either been to Andrews or visited or have second homes here who’ve also donated. We were able to raise over $2,000 in donations, and hopefully our other fundraising efforts will result in multiple trips as the needs will constantly evolve over time.”
The letters – which were also due to undergo first drafts, revising and final drafts in the lesson – were scheduled to be mailed during the beginning of Thanksgiving week. The letters hopefully would be delivered on the heels of the holiday, when “we all have so much to be thankful for.”
Phelps said she also looks forward to the responses of Owen students, and how this assignment will foster friendships for a long time – hopefully a lifetime.
Details: Visit ams.cherokee.k12.nc.us.