Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 19, 1995 TAG: 9503180034
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BETH MACY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Had it been last year, the 16-year-old sophomore says she may have entered the fray. "I was tough last year. I wore the baggy clothes, the Starter coats. I was fighting every other day on the streets."
Leann credits the school-based Teen Outreach Program (TOP) for her metamorphosis into a teen-ager who gets decent grades, who rarely fights, and whose mother no longer threatens to send her to Sanctuary, the crisis-intervention center for unruly teens.
She credits TOP and Margaret, a nursing-home resident she cares for, for giving her back her youth.
"TOP has really changed me," Leann says. "It's really helped me get control of my behavior."
TOP began in Roanoke in 1990 as a Junior League project for at-risk freshmen and sophomores. A nationwide program, it pairs students with people who need help and company - this year, at two elementary schools and two nursing homes - believing that the best route to a person's self-esteem is through helping others.
Its results in Roanoke and elsewhere have been astounding. TOP is one of the few programs that statistically proves success in lowering truancy, school suspension, crime, school failure and teen pregnancy.
Along the way, it also provides students with birth-control education, tutoring and positive adult role models. In Roanoke, PTA mothers and employees on loan from Dillard Paper Co. carpool the students from school to their work sites; retirees and employees from the library and Appalachian Power Co. do one-on-one tutoring at the schools.
"People think the community service aspect is fluff, but this is really the power," says Cheri Hartman, the educational psychologist who directs the project.
"It's the vehicle for reaching the kids."
Society in general doesn't offer many meaningful niches for adolescents, Hartman believes. "TOP gives them a way to take risks and experiment with different roles, but in a supervised, structured environment."
With 58 students from Patrick Henry and 12 from Alternative Education this year, TOP students volunteer one-on-one with the same people each week. The activities they pair up to do - typically crafts and reading with the kids; crafts and interviews with the seniors - aren't as important as the quality of the relationships forged, Hartman says.
"We are teaching the teens how to nurture. And you know what? It's become cool to be nurturing!"
Sixteen-year-old Barbara Flowers says she used to think "all old people were grouchy" until she started her weekly visits with Bertha, a nursing-home resident. "She's starting to lose her memory and repeat herself," the Patrick Henry sophomore says.
"She tries to laugh it off, but then she stares off in space so I know it bothers her. It's real sad. I like to pick on her till I can get her laughing again."
Barbara says working with Bertha - recording her family history, helping her in and out of elevators, even taking her to the restroom - has caused her to re-examine her attitude and goals. "I used to want to be a secretary, but now I want to be a nurse," she says.
Funded initially by the Junior League, TOP almost doubled the number of students it serves this year, thanks to a $36,300 pregnancy-prevention grant from the Virginia Department of Health. As an incentive to stay with the program, the Junior League buys class rings for all sophomores who complete the program.
Hartman ran the program for four years as a Junior League volunteer. This year, with state funding that's boosted her budget to $59,000, she's been able to draw a salary, plus hire counselor Gabe Saker, who works on strengthening the parent-child-school relationship. Saker takes photographs of the kids "caught doing good" at school to mail home to their parents, and organizes "family nights" with pizza and slide shows.
While sophomore Larmar Journiette doesn't hold much hope for some of his peers - high-school boys who think having sex is nothing more than a score - he says TOP has taught him about more than sexually transmitted disease protection and pregnancy prevention.
It's taught him about respect, nurturing and manhood.
"A lot of guys think having a baby makes them a man," the 16-year-old says. "I think there's more guys [than girls] that want to have babies."
Larmar says both his attitude and his grades have improved since he began working with 5-year-old Adrienne at Hurt Park Elementary, reading to her, playing games and helping with her schoolwork.
"It's changed me in a big way because I like to help her out," he says. "It makes me feel special."
When teens like Larmar see the direct improvement they're making in a person's life, "that's really the magic," Hartman explains.
"It's so neat because you have some of these big burly football players, and to see the little buddies crawl up in their laps, it's just a real feel-good thing."
by CNB