The Partnership
for Appalachian Girls’
Education
2016 Annual Report
OUR MISSION IS TO EDUCATE
AND EMPOWER GIRLS SO
THEY CAN BECOME LEADERS
IN A NEW APPALACHIA
Partnership for Appalachian Girls’ Education
Annual Report | FY January 1, 2016-December 31, 2016
“One child, one teacher,
one book and one pen
can change the world.”
Malala Yousafzai, education
activist and winner at age 17 of
the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize
A
s we near the end of PAGE’s seventh year
and anticipate what lies ahead, we are
proud of the milestones we have reached.
This year has marked some important firsts
for PAGE. Our High School Interns — Lizbeth
Turrubiartes, Alexis Wills, and Catherine ‘Katie’
Wills — were for the first time graduates of our
four-year middle school program. Our PAGE model
has come full circle as we have watched these
three young women, 6th graders in our launch
year of 2010, create new college pathways as
seniors in high school.
The past year has also marked an important
addition to our full-year staff. Nancy Allen, a
widely respected career educator from Madison
County, enjoyed her first full year as Program
Director. Nancy has provided skillful leadership
for program operations and instruction, in a way
that conveys our
deepest values. It is
hard to imagine life
in PAGE without her
passion, energy, and
deep commitment to
empowering and
educating every girl.
In the pages that
follow, we offer some
reflections on a year of learning. We believe that
a promising theme emerges from our look back.
After seven years of hard work and collaboration,
PAGE is poised to share its story with a national
audience, to plan for its future expansion, and to
fulfill the promise of its design.
PAGE is designed to help girls in rural Appalachia enter an economic world that is global, digitally connected, and navigated through literacy
and leadership skills. Over the year, our students
have created advanced projects in a Digital
Learning Lab, read books, developed creative and
critical thinking skills, and discovered new ways of
achieving their college dreams. We have worked
to help girls learn 21st century skills and become
young leaders in a new Appalachia.
We are pleased to share with you reflections
on this year’s work to achieve our mission
of investing in innovative education that will
empower girls in rural Appalachia.
Middle School Program
T
his year, 47 students from Madison
County communities benefitted from a
middle school program that provided
both school year and summer learning
opportunities for girls in grades 6-9. These
were students from Hot Springs, Laurel,
Spring Creek, and—for the first time—the
Walnut community.
At the core of our middle school program
was a focus on literacy, leadership skills, and
digital learning. Probably nothing speaks to
the global, 21st century focus and yet local
roots of the PAGE model more than our
Digital Learning Lab.
Thanks to generous funding from The
Grable Foundation in Pittsburgh and a threeyear capacity-building grant from The NoVo
Foundation in New York, we were able in
2016 to take our Digital Learning Lab to new
levels. With additional funding for equipment
from The Glass Foundation of Asheville, we
purchased new MacBook computers and
needed technology tools for our mobile lab.
With help from Caroline Davis of Madison
County Schools, we received free film-editing
software uploads from Adobe. Rural girls
benefitted from the most current digital
learning tools. In this updated learning lab with
our 5:1 teaching ratio, even our youngest, 6th
grade students created multi-media projects
that would be daunting for most adults.
Our undergraduate and high school intern
team and our first PAGE graduate fellow,
Natasha Perez, benefitted from the superb
staff workshop and mentoring provided by
our friends from StoryCenter of Berkeley, California: Allison Myers and Stefani Sese. PAGE
girls were able to connect the rich stories and
music traditions of the region with a 21st century learning process that teaches advanced
literacy skills, technology, and multi-media
production.
Parris, a student from
the Laurel community,
was among our class
of 6th grade students.
She used technology to
weave together multiple
Watch Parris’
media: a heartwarming
digital project
story about her dog,
photos from the trailer home where she lives,
and an old church hymn—performed by local
fiddler, Emma McDowell Best.
Digital learning and literacy were a highlight of PAGE teaching and learning across the
year. During the school year, Program Director
Nancy Allen—in partnership with the Madison
County Library—piloted a literacy project in
which middle school girls created digital books.
Over the summer, our students participated
in small book groups led by Duke University interns. Our book titles ranged from The
Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank to Malala
Yousafzai’s memoir, I Am Malala. In these intimate learning settings and with our focus on
high-level critical thinking skills, middle school
girls were able to do close readings of books
and, in the process, discover their own voices.
High School & College
Student Internships
“
O
“Over the past weeks I have met remarkable
young women who have strong minds and
are eager to learn new things…. There have
been many opportunities opened for me
through PAGE, or the Partnership for
Appalachian Girls’ Education. I am thrilled
to have the opportunity to be involved in
an educational initiative before I become
a teacher.” –Alexis Willis
ur High School Internship is a special
part of our PAGE model. Each year,
two-three local 11th grade girls with
college dreams apply for competitive positions as High School Interns. They receive
mentoring support for their college searches and applications from a member of our
college intern team. Each High School Intern
also receives a laptop computer to help her
achieve success as a college-bound student.
Our High School Internship program was
funded through generous support from The
McClure Educational and Development Fund
in Fairview, North Carolina. We are honored
to build on the legacy of James G.K. McClure,
a leader with a vision of supporting economic well being for rural people.
The past year, we reached an important
milestone. For the first time, our three High
School Interns were
also graduates of our
middle school program.
Catherine ‘Katie’
Wills and Alexis Wills
of Hot Springs were
entering 6th graders
Watch Lizbeth’s
in 2010, the year of
digital project
our launch in the
Spring Creek Community Center. Lizbeth
Turrubiartes of Spring Creek joined PAGE
the following year as a rising 7th grader.
The self-confidence with which the three
assumed their new leadership roles in PAGE
was immediately visible. With the poise and
insider knowledge of girls who had grown
up with PAGE, they introduced our Duke
University interns to the people and places
of rural Madison County. The two groups of
interns—local high school girls and college
interns—learned to work together as a team
with a common goal: to inspire and teach
middle school girls.
Alexis, Katie, and Lizbeth joined our
college interns for a rigorous staff workshop
prior to our PAGE summer program. For
the first time since they were PAGE middle school students, the three joined Duke
interns in creating multi-media projects and
honing technology skills, so they could teach
these skills to younger peers. Lizbeth’s digital
project expresses the growing maturity of
High School Interns on the cusp of young
adulthood. She also gives voice to her Latina
roots, a global part of her life growing up in
Spring Creek, North Carolina.
We could not be prouder of the achievements of these three young women. With
mentoring support they received from
Lauren Blanchette, now a senior at Duke
University majoring in psychology, all three
are celebrating college acceptance letters.
Alexis has received good news from Mars
Hill University and is waiting to hear from
Western Carolina University and Meredith
College. Katie has not only been accepted by
her dream school of Lees-McRae College; she
has also received a partial scholarship. And
Lizbeth is waiting to hear from her dream
school, UNC–Chapel Hill, as she celebrates her
acceptance by Western Carolina University.
Our three High School Interns are the voices of a
new Appalachia. Their stories speak to the hope of
investing in innovative education that can empower
girls locally and globally.
S
ince our PAGE program’s earliest days in 2010,
our team of PAGE Interns has been a critical part of our model. Each year, successful
undergraduates serve as teachers, mentors, and
inspiring role models for middle school girls and
our High School Interns. These college interns are
selected annually through a competitive application
and interview process.
Thanks to grant funding from The William R.
Kenan, Jr. Charitable Trust and matching funds from
Duke University’s Bass Connections—Education and
Human Development, six Duke University women
served as 2016 PAGE Interns. The six undergraduates
represented a range of academic majors—Psychology,
Public Policy, Computer Science, Women’s Studies—
and came to Madison County from the South,
Midwest, and Northeast. Each PAGE Intern spent
nine weeks serving in Hot Springs and living in
the historic Dorland-Bell House, now owned and
lovingly restored by Sally and Ike Lassiter.
These young women provided exemplary leadership and teamwork. Their work as a team made
implementing a 21st century curriculum and inspiring
middle school girls to high levels of achievement appear seamless—like the work of seasoned educators.
The special mentoring relationship formed
between our PAGE Interns and our students is
captured in a moving essay written by Evangeline
‘Evie’ Marecki. In her essay printed in EducationNC,
Evie describes her work to help a PAGE girl create
a digital project about a painful transition: she had
been taken from her mother’s home and placed in
the protective care of her grandmother.
This year, we made important progress towards
our goal of building a campus community that is engaged with PAGE across the year. All four of our 2016
PAGE Interns still on Duke campus have remained
actively engaged with PAGE: attending monthly
meetings, planning a 9th/10th grade mentoring project, recruiting new college and high school Interns
for 2017, and
sharing our
PAGE story on
social media
and in community speaking
events.
The PAGE
experience can
be as transformative for
college interns as it is for the girls they teach and
mentor. Our goal is to build on the success of our
college internship program, with opportunities for
campus engagement that will only deepen the experience for college interns and our PAGE students.
2016 PAGE Interns
Lauren Blanchette
Lauren Hagedorn
Natalie Hollister
Anna Huck
Evangeline Marecki
Rebecca Trinklein
I
t is the college interns’ job to listen, ask,
and probe, to push the girls to go deeper
with their stories.
I assure you, it is no easy task. The process
of digital storytelling is a collaborative and often deeply personal endeavor. It goes beyond
any reflective pieces [girls] may have written,
but in the end, some pieces even reach the
depth of a college personal statement.
Through [this process], bonds are
formed, allowing us to learn about each individual girl: her family, her animals, stories
about her siblings…. In working with the
PAGE girls, I am continually in awe of their
vulnerability and humility when sharing impactful events in their lives and the stories,
good and bad,that make up who they are.
In the last two days of PAGE, all of the
girls’ stories were shared.
We watched the story of the girl I had
talked to on the first day. She called it
“Gratefulness.” It was beautiful.
The final credit of her story said “Thank
you Evie for inspiring me”.
I’ve never had a commanding presence
within or at the head of the classroom, and
I probably never will. But in that moment, I
knew that one voice can have an impact, no
matter how loudly or quietly it speaks.
— Evangeline Marecki, Duke Class of 2019
Our Impact
EARLY FINDINGS
Preliminary analysis of 2016 post-program
survey data (n=34) indicates that PAGE
participants enjoy their experience
and that the PAGE program achieves its
intended outcomes. Sample data includes
the following:
▶ In total, 85% of respondents reported
having been very satisfied with their PAGE
experience; all respondents reported some
degree of satisfaction (i.e., no respondents
reported being not at all satisfied).
▶ Of the outcomes assessed, PAGE
respondents reported most growth in
thinking about their long-term goals (94%
reporting some or a lot of gain in this area).
Respondents also reported that PAGE
helped them in numerous other desired
program outcomes, including becoming
more interested in reading (82%), thinking
of themselves as leaders (88%), and
becoming more interested in working with
digital technology (88%).
▶ For PAGE participants who had also
participated in 2015-16, campus visits were
deemed the most valuable activity for their
schooling; 100% of respondents reported
that campus visits helped them “a lot” in
school their previous year.
T
he careful evaluation of our program’s impact
on girls’ lives and educational outcomes is
critical for PAGE’s success. We need to understand our short- and long-term impact to make
sure we are offering the highest quality program
and meeting our students’ needs. We also need this
information for our three-year strategic planning.
Thanks to a capacity-building grant from the
William R. Kenan, Jr. Charitable Trust and additional
in-kind contributions from Duke University’s Education and Human Development incubator (EHDi), we
made good progress with program evaluation over
the 2016 year. Our first step was the formation of an
outside evaluation team. Like most things in PAGE,
our evaluation is built on collaboration between partners. It is headed by
Jessica Sperling Smokoski of Duke
University’s Education and Human
Development incubator (EHDi)/Social
Science Research Institute (SSRI).
Providing support with research and
data is Caroline Davis, Director of
Gifted Education at Madison County Schools.
This team effort started with the construction of a
Logic Model—designed to guide the evaluation and
tailor it to PAGE’s mission, goals, and design. Working
with this model, our evaluation team identified ways
to measure short-term outcomes (such as increased
academic engagement, self-confidence, and aspirations to graduate and attend college) and longer-term
outcomes (such as enrolling in honors courses, graduating from high school, and matriculating into college).
This collaborative effort has already begun to
yield insights about PAGE’s impact. In program
surveys (one measure used to evaluate PAGE’s
short term impact), girls reported growth in thinking
about their long-term goals for their lives, becoming
more interested in reading and digital technology,
and thinking of themselves as leaders.
Our goal with this continuing evaluation is to
build on these early 2016 results with a multi-year
study of PAGE’s impact on girls’ lives and educational outcomes. The questions being addressed in
2016-2017 through the collaborative efforts of our
evaluation team include:
▶ Do our PAGE students who have completed the
four-year middle school program enroll in AP/Honors
high school classes? Do they see and position themselves in high school as college-bound students?
▶ How are PAGE girls doing in school, in terms of
their attendance and grades?
▶ How do our PAGE students compare academically
and in terms of graduation rates and college choices
with a cohort of girls from the same rural area, prior
to the existence of PAGE?
Questions such as these will be easier to assess
as our PAGE middle school girls cycle through our
program and reach 12th grade. 2016 marked the
first year that PAGE girls have reached this milestone. The progress of our three High School Interns
speaks well to our hope that the coming two years
will bring good news about PAGE’s long-term impact. We look forward to sharing lessons learned as
PAGE’s outside evaluation team digs into data, talks
to girls, and reports on its discoveries.
Our Funders
Our year began with some promising news
for PAGE. In January, we were selected for a
major capacity building grant from The William
R. Kenan, Jr. Charitable Trust of Chapel Hill,
North Carolina. Our initiative falls within one
of the Trust’s focus areas: to invest in high
quality and innovative educational programs
that create opportunity and improve quality
of life. Our work with some of the state’s most
vulnerable students also builds on a tradition
of service to North Carolina.
This three-year $210,000 grant has a 1:1
match requirement, and in 2016 we were able
to achieve the first $70,000 of this match.
A major contribution was provided from The
Helen A. Powers Fund, established by a Western North Carolina native. Helen Powers had
a special interest in programs and organizations supporting girls and women, especially
those in rural communities. PAGE was selected for a two-year award from her Fund, now
managed by U.S. Trust of Boston.
Other major grants helped PAGE build
capacity for its digital learning initiative. In
Fall 2015, The NoVo Foundation, an international philanthropy based in New York, selected PAGE for a three-year grant to support
21st century learning opportunities for girls
in Appalachia. This grant is part of the Foundation’s global investment in initiatives that
advance adolescent girls’ rights, including a
$90 million investment in efforts to address
the inequalities faced by girls and women in
America.
Two other foundations also helped PAGE
build capacity for its digital learning initiative.
A grant from The Grable Foundation of Pittsburgh helped us upgrade our Digital Learning
Lab and provide advanced staff training and
on-site mentoring for our digital initiative. A
grant from The Glass Foundation of Asheville
allowed us to purchase needed equipment
to improve our Digital Learning Lab: new
MacBook computers and technology tools for
teaching 21st century skills.
We were also fortunate to receive a
People in Need grant from the Community
Foundation of Western North Carolina. This
investment allowed us to expand our educational services to include school-year learning
opportunities and a parent education program. Thanks to this investment, Nancy Allen,
a Madison County native and widely respected school leader, enjoyed her first full year
as Program Director. Her leadership has been
integral to building capacity and building
community.
We are doubly fortunate, for one of Madison County’s finest educators has joined our
PAGE team.
We are also deeply grateful for the many
gifts we received across the year from generous individuals, family foundations, and
corporate donors.
OUR SPONSORS
Private Foundations
The Beattie Foundation | The Glass Foundation
The Grable Foundation | The Gradison Foundation
The Haddock Foundation | The NoVo Foundation
The Ernst and Gertrude Ticho Charitable Foundation
The J.W. and Ethel I. Woodruff Foundation
Funds and Charitable Trusts
The William R. Kenan, Jr. Charitable Trust
The McClure Educational and Development Fund
The Helen A. Powers Fund
Community Foundations
The Community Foundation of Western North Carolina
(People in Need Grant)
Corporate Sponsors
First Citizens Bank-Buncombe
Partners
Bass Connections-Education and Human Development
Duke University
Madison County Schools
And generous private donors from across North Carolina and our nation.
About PAGE
▶ PAGE was launched in 2010 in the community of Spring Creek,
with a team of three Duke University interns and its founding director
(Deborah Hicks-Rogoff) and an entering cohort of nine 6th grade girls.
▶ In 2016, PAGE served a total of 51 girls in Madison County, including
39 girls in our middle school program (grades 6-9), eight rising 10th
grade girls, one rising 11th grader, and three High School Interns.
▶ Our staff has expanded to include a full-year program director in
Madison County (Nancy Allen), a full-year executive director (Deborah
Hicks-Rogoff), and a summer team of six undergraduate interns, three
high school interns, our own cook and cook’s assistant, an instructional
assistant (Deborah Chandler), and three school bus drivers.
▶ Formerly a summer program only, PAGE now provides eleven months
of learning and mentoring opportunities across the school year and in
our intensive six-week summer program.
▶ Our demonstration site is located in Madison County, North Carolina.
In the school year, we offer learning and mentoring opportunities in the
town of Marshall, home to the county’s consolidated middle school and
high school. In the summer, our program moves to the small community
of Hot Springs—the most central location for students who live in the
rural areas we serve: Hot Springs, Laurel, Spring Creek, and Walnut.
▶ The areas served by PAGE have been identified as economically
distressed by the Appalachian Regional Commission—the leading
authority on the region. These rural communities are more similar in
economic profile to vulnerable counties in East Tennessee, within
walking distance of some PAGE girls’ homes.
▶ PAGE is funded through foundation grants and private gifts, and
through in-kind contributions from its two key partners: Madison
County Schools and Duke University’s Social Science Research Institute
(SSRI)/Education and Human Development incubator (EHDi).
INSPIRE. EDUCATE. EMPOWER.
[email protected] | WWW.CAROLINAPAGE.ORG