Today on Education Counts Michiana, New Life Creation in Marshall County, Positive Parenting Program, EnFocus Fellowship Program, The History Museum Kids Summer Program.

Education Counts Michiana is underwritten by Pokagon Band of Potawatomi.

Investing in education and economic development for centuries.

Supporting the past, current and future development of the Michiana region.

Community Foundation of Elkhart County.

Inspire good.

Kosciusko County Community Foundation, Where Donor Dreams Shine.

The Dekko Foundation.

Community Foundation of Saint Joseph County.

LaGrange County Community Foundation Nipsco.

The Beim Foundation.

Crossroads United Way.

Serving Elkhart, LaGrange and Noble Counties.

United Way of Saint Joseph County.

Marshall County Community Foundation.

Ready to Grow Saint Joe Early Childhood Coalition and a Gift by Elmer and Dolores Tepe.

Thank you.

Welcome to Education Counts Michiana.

I'm your host, James Summers.

Education Counts highlights programs and initiatives that are impacting how we teach, how we learn, and how we embrace education.

This program explores ideas in all education sectors; preschool through lifelong learning, K-12, post-High school and job advancement training with the philosophy that we should never stop seeking knowledge.

Find additional resources atWNIT.org and on the Education Counts Facebook page.

First up; A creative outlet.

New Life Creation is an art program for inmates at the Marshall County Jail.

Art instructors meet the prisoners once a week to teach painting techniques, giving the students the tools and the opportunity to express themselves creatively.

Videographer Kristen Franklin, editor Greg Banks.

I get shot or something.

I made an abstract which is very hard to do.

Here at the Marshall County Jail, we started doing the New Life Creation art program in October of 2020.

It's part of the Jail Chemical Addictions Program, or JCAP, we like to call it.

What I like about it is I really think it gives the guys and the girls option or an opportunity to kind of turn--turn their stress off of their situation and maybe some things going on with their family, that type of stuff where they can just kind of quiet their brains for a couple of hours.

That's why it's a coping skill.

My goal with it is that they--they enjoy it.

They learn a new skill, and then they take this as a coping skill that they--they take with them when they're no longer incarcerated and utilize that at home.

Everything about good mental health really depends on language.

Language is the basis for all of it.

And art is a new language, and it's a form of giving them a vocabulary that--that is safe and it's fun.

At the same time, it's also really connected to the brain, and it helps to rewire the brain.

So it helps in terms of depression.

And, you know, so many people who are incarcerated have to feel some amount of depression.

And it helps them express themselves.

It helps them to put them in a different place.

Art is great for therapeutic reasons, and it just is a wonderful way for the guys to really kind of find out things they didn't know about themselves.

And a lot of them discover they--they're actually quite talented.

We've done pastels, we've done acrylics, and so much of it is textural.

And we know that there's a different message that goes from using the hand left or right to the brain that is different than using like a computer or just talking even.

So it offers just a wide variety of opportunities for them to grow internally and externally.

I want the guys to really express themselves.

I want them to--to create things that they feel, that they are feeling and that speak to them.

I want them to be able to bring out their creative side through their art.

And maybe the art will tell a story and help them tell a story or help them to maybe resolve some--some issues they have.

And it really is a way for them to kind of emotionally connect to the artwork.

Okay, you know who Pablo Picasso is?

You know, we don't just color we talk about art philosophy.

We talk about different artists.

We talk about how art helps us to feel escape.

And that's a big one, I think, for a lot of the women that it gives them a form of--of transporting some other place where there's beauty and safety.

Guys who have come into the program with really not much interest in painting.

And not only did they discover they love to paint, but they discover they actually had a real talent for it.

And we--I know of one person in particular is just so grateful that we introduced him to painting because now he wants to take that back to his community and--and help--help kids, actually.

And so we're real excited for that.

Not only are we helping to rewire the brain, but we're providing them with a sense of pleasure and a sense of accomplishment, which is very helpful in terms of building their confidence, their self-esteem.

The whole thing about art is that it's--it's like the language of the heart.

I think oftentimes in the criminal justice system, people as people start feeling like they're not being treated like humans.

A program like ours, and especially the art class, and they're getting to interact with, you know, fantastic people from the public.

It really brings this human side out where it's like, okay, I get it.

You made some mistakes or some poor choices and you are an inmate.

I can't take that part away.

But you know, you're also human and I can treat you respectfully and you can treat me respectfully.

And what that really does is, is practice for them.

So that--I mean, if you can sit down and have a conversation with me and it's respectful and we're both just human beings talking when you leave here, you can act that same way and that's going to help you be successful in life.

This is Elizabeth's and this hung in the art show.

I'm not a huge fan of that.

Huh?

But it looks nice, doesn't it?

It looks better framed, for sure.

The finished painting isn't really even what this is about.

It's about more the process and the journey that they have as they're painting and what their experiences are as their painting.

It ends up being a painting that they're most of them are proud of.

And but in general, it's more of the process and the journey they have through the painting.

Learn more about adult art education at WNIT.org Parent training; to further their mission of providing education to kids and their parents, the Elkhart and St Joseph County Headstart Consortium and Positive Parenting Program have partnered up.

Head Start provided training to several of Triple P's family and child specialists to bring them up to primary care level three.

This level of intervention is designed to be delivered one on one with parents to address various topics.

Segment producer Brent Fox presents this story.

Two organizations geared towards helping families are the Elkhart and St Joseph County Head Start Consortium.

We are a federally funded program serving children aged 0 to 5 years old.

And of course we have comprehensive services and that includes health, education and social service.

And the biggest part of our social service component is family engagement, parent engagement, where we try to engage parents and setting goals for their families and working with the teachers in order to prepare their children for kindergarten.

And the positive parenting program or Triple P. It's an international program that's evidence based, is being implemented all over the world, and we've been implementing it here in Elkhart County since 2015.

And basically, Triple P believes that all parents need some support along their parenting journey.

So we really work at trying to normalize that so that parents feel like they can ask for support.

A partnership between the two has made both organizations stronger.

Back in 2014, we came together as collective community stakeholders and we were involved in a seminar for the day.

And I think what was intriguing to me was that it was involving the University of Australia.

So I began to think that when you think of Head Start, it's mostly a national program because we're directly funded out of Washington, D.C.

But here we're having an opportunity now to be more global in our thought process and the fact that Triple P reaches families across the world.

And I thought, wow, this is becoming cutting edge for us.

We were very excited that Head Start wanted to partner with us because we bring the curriculum, we bring the resources.

But Head Start has access to lots of--hundreds of families in this community.

So really glad to partner with them.

The partnership has gone through different phases.

What's really exciting about the current phase that we're in is that they have trained all of their family and support specialists in Triple P curriculum so that families can go directly to their staff to get the support when they need it.

One of the goals for the family coming specialist is to empower the families and making sure they have all the resources and access to information that they may need as a parent.

So each family, then we work in Head Start.

You set up a family, go.

And when we meet those families, most likely those families are going to show off as struggles that they may have with a child or a behavioral or a challenge that they don't know how to overcome.

So partnering with Triple P is just the perfect fit to give that information to their family.

A partnership offers increased benefits not just for the people in those organizations, but for all the people they work to serve.

I have several parents during last year and the child don't want to come to school at all crying.

And we work with a separate--separation anxiety with their family.

And I can see the child with work pad ready to come to school.

And we have many families then approach our family specialist to say, when is the next session.

I just finished a session.

They want to go to that section.

So parents are getting very--be okay not to be okay and ask for help.

The families benefit.

Families are going to feel more confident, more capable of working effectively with their kids.

The kids are going to benefit because they're going to have parents who have access to evidence based parenting information.

Head starts going to benefit because hopefully kiddos or behavior can improve in the classroom.

The community is going to benefit because kids are going to enter school a bit better prepared to be in school and numerous other organizations, mental health organizations, really all partners in our community are going to benefit.

When families are stronger.

The children benefit because they're receiving the support of the services from the--the training and the knowledge of our family and community specialists to help the family and the teachers in the classroom.

Families benefit because they're learning and understanding what is my child and--and how do they develop at this age?

And--and then we benefit because we see the health and well-being of our community thriving every day.

Find out more about all these stories at WNIT.org.

Saving the Brain Drain.

The enFocus Fellowship Program is a unique program helping solve business problems while keeping talent in our local workforce.

Fellows commit to two years to work in their area of interest while learning the business and recognizing potential and growth, new services and innovation.

The program is capped by a poster presentation by the fellows.

Videographer Kristen Franklin, editor Greg Banks.

South Bend is a dying city.

I think now we're 70th most desirable to live in the country.

We're all partly responsible for that.

Wholly responsible.

We're excited today to celebrate enFocus's ten year impact milestone.

And so we conduct an annual event that celebrates our--each year's activities, but we're also celebrating ten years of our organizational history.

So our mission is to empower talent to build stronger communities.

And really, we want to attract talent to this region to help organizations solve problems and to invent new programs, products and services.

And so in ten years, we've brought over a thousand individuals to South Bend, Elkhart, in the region through our fellowships and internship program.

And we've completed over 450 different business and technology projects, which we believe is something that we should all be celebrating.

I am a Civic Innovation Fellow.

with enFocus.

What Civic Fellows do is we work with local organizations, nonprofit organizations, governmental and educational organizations on civic portfolio projects.

We obviously the needs of the projects are customized to the organization and their needs.

But we are part of this two year fellowship program with enFocus, and I'm currently a first year fellow.

The other thing that's interesting is that commitment from all of you recent graduates or current students in the room to take that leap of faith with us in this community can be anywhere else in the world where you came from, all across the world, and you're standing at Union Station in South Bend celebrating this impact over ten years.

Not just ours, but in the community.

So the cool thing about enFocus is that we get to work in various different areas that we serve.

So we serve in three counties currently; St. Joe, Elkhart and Marshall County.

And we have also been exploring serving the Southwest Michigan region, which is really exciting for us.

So I've been a part of understanding the feasibility of that growth.

So understanding what are good first projects for us to do, how can we collaboratively get all of our community leaders in one room talking and understanding unified vision together?

So we really do work in all of different areas.

And I've been fortunate enough to have projects within Elkhart County as well as St. Joe and of course Southwest Michigan now as well.

So throughout the entire fellowship, I have been onboarded onto a lot of different projects, you know, ranging from creating and creating a commercialization plan for an ERP software to maybe creating dashboards.

So throughout all these different projects, I was able to learn a lot of different skillsets as well, like data analytics, dashboard creation, software engineering and just basic soft skills that help me juggle in between multiple different projects.

We help with our talents, with our young fellows to come up with innovative solutions to impact their communities.

And that impact can be in different ways.

For example, I have been working with the Women in STEM program network locally, so we have been trying to come up with this network that assists women and gives them that platform to showcase their professional and career achievements and have that network of support.

We participated with local organizations and various projects experiments.

So for the younger girls to show them that STEM is fun.

So STEM is for everyone and that girls can have success in the field of STEM.

And I think that's what a network does.

It is a collective we.

It's not enFocus, it's not one organization.

It is a community of leaders and residents all coming together to say this place we want to be.

And so in 2012, ten years ago, we were one of the eighth--South Bend was one of the eight dying cities in the United States.

But with all the collective work and that means helping your organization think through problems, think to processes, and actually being an engine to help and build capacity to actually work towards that.

So it's tough.

It's changed.

But at the same time it's invigorating because on the other side we can say, look at how far we've come.

And one major example of that is we've recently been ranked as one of the 70th most desirable cities to live in as opposed to a dying community.

We are a community on the move, making improvements and growing.

I think that there is big potential for enFocus to become a national organization as we are definitely growing within between state lines.

I think that there's going to be so much more value as we keep replicating and moving forward.

There has been very similar sort of interest that of projects and work that we've done in the St.Joe County as well as Elkhart County and Marshall County in southwest Michigan.

So I can see that this trend can be found nationally and small to midsize towns.

Personally, I would still like to stay and learn more from, you know, local mentors.

I have a lot of different mentors from--from enFocus.

You know, they've been working at enFocus for a longer time.

I'm also really hopeful to establish more connections with people from the local community.

And hopefully I am able to work on more projects, you know, connecting more people together with that connection and a network that we have and and focus and just help this region prosper and grow and to--altogether.

Learn more about the program at WNIT.org.

The future of history; history can really come to life through hands on or interactive experiences.

The summer at Kids First at the History Museum of South Bend offers a variety of topics, ranging from history to geology.

Kids First museum here at the History Museum is an area where children can come and experience history.

Learning about the past is important to children.

It's important to families, and it's important to the community.

And we are so proud that we can help make that happen.

We have had Kids First as part of the History Museum since this building was first built in 1994, and well before that, when the museum was located in the courthouse on Lafayette Boulevard in South Bend.

Kids First is geared for children in pre-K through grade three.

Our curriculum and interpretive plan includes lots of activities for kids to be immersed so they can jump back into the past.

We interpret Kids First as if it is a small pioneer town here in northern Indiana or southern Michigan in the 1820s.

You might see in Kids First are miniature versions of what you would see in a pioneer village.

So you would see a log cabin, a one room schoolhouse, a trading post farrier shop.

But then you also will see Pottawattamie Village.

We have always felt that helping children learn about history was important, but we also know that children learn in so many different ways.

So we want them to experience the history that they're learning.

We know that they when they come in and it's visual, they can see things that look fun, when they can hear things, when they can touch things.

All of that is so important to helping them experience the learning that makes history fun for them.

The Kids First Museum allows children to touch the items and has a variety of programs to bring history to life.

What we try to do is invite students to look at the past.

They come in with a knowledge of the basic things about life.

They know about family.

They know about going to school.

They know what it means to go to work.

And they also know what it means to take care of the environment.

So what we're asking them to do with the lessons and activities here isn't too much of a stretch.

They're applying what they know and then jump right in to the interactives.

And then, without knowing it, they are acting out life as they know it, but doing it as they did in the past.

When they come to a museum like this where you're actually able to touch them, I think that kind of sets off another spark in their minds to not only imagine what these creatures might have looked like, but also maybe to do some more investigation or to be an art project or just go off in many different directions.

So it's just another way for them to learn and be excited about what they're learning about.

When they can interact with something, when they can touch something or hear something or walk inside of a room that just impresses them and helps them to gather the information in an even better way.

It's good for adults, too, but especially for children.

We understand that that's important.

And so that's important to us, too, because we want to make sure that.

When we're talking about history, that we're doing it at their level, at a level that they can understand, and that has meaning to them.

And the acquisition of artifacts from another area children's museum has only brought in more items to interact with.

The Mishawaka Children's Museum started in an empty schoolroom in Mary Phillips School, and then over its 75 year history, we were donated thousands of objects which required them to move to two subsequent locations.

And then in 1977, when Ms.. Lindell died, they decided to rename the museum, the Hannah Lindell Children's Museum in her honor.

At a certain point in 2018, School City of Mishawaka was no longer able to support us.

So in our search for a solution of what to do, the History Museum offered the collection and I knew home because I was a longtime volunteer at the Hannah Lindell Children's Museum and acting director when we closed.

With the acquisition of the Hannah Lindell collection, we were able to pull many wonderful items from its natural history collection, and through those we were able to offer a different look at fossils or rocks, geodes and other minerals, and then allow children to get a close up of what those look like under a microscope.

The kids first museum at the History Museum in South Bend is working to provide students and their teachers with the tools to create a love of learning.

We recently wrote a curriculum that allows students in pre-K through Grade three to not only touch on those traditional social studies standards they might be learning in school, but we've also been able to incorporate and expand those standards to cover some of the ones they might find under the STEM umbrella.

Now, in addition to social studies, they'll find science, technology, engineering and even math.

We believe that we're sowing seeds.

We know that if children have a good experience with learning about history, they can take that into their classroom and beyond.

Because then it's not just something that they have to learn.

It's something that they've understood is fun to learn, and that is really critical as they grow older and begin looking at topics in history even more deeply than as they do when they're children.

Check out WNIT.org for more information on all of these stories.

Thank you for joining us on Education Counts Michiana.

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The success of every student matters.

Education Counts Michiana is underwritten by Pokagon Band of Potawatomi.

Investing in education and economic development for centuries.

Supporting the past, current and future development of the Michiana region.

Community Foundation of Elkhart County.

Inspire Good Kosciusko County Community Foundation.

Where Donor Dreams Shine.

The Dekko Foundation.

Community Foundation of St. Joseph County.

LaGrange County Community Foundation.

Nipsco.

The Beim Foundation.

Crossroads United Way.

Serving Elkhart, LaGrange and Noble Counties.

United Way of St. Joseph County.

Marshall County Community Foundation.

Ready to Grow St. Joe Early Childhood Coalition and a Gift by Elmer and Dolores Tepe.

Thank you.

This WNIT local production has been made possible in part by viewers like you.

Thank you.