OGDENSBURG -- North Country Assemblywoman Addie A.E. Jenne, D-Theresa, stopped at the Ogdensburg Free Academy to get an update on a student poverty/trauma initiative that is being implemented in the district in the 2017-18 school year.

A team of teachers from the district, joined by several other districts from St. Lawrence and Franklin counties, recently attended the Center for Learning Centered Education's two-day workshop on the initiative at St. Lawrence University.

They shared feedback from that workshop with the assemblywoman and were joined by district administrators as well as representatives from the institute's team.

The Student Poverty/Trauma Initiative is a collaborative process designed by the Institute for Learning Centered Education and co-sponsored with the three BOCES districts that include Jefferson, St. Lawrence and Franklin counties.

The initiative was piloted in the Copenhagen, Colton-Pierrepont and Tupper Lake school districts last year and has now expanded to include the Ogdensburg, Massena, Norwood-Norfolk and Gouverneur school districts. Teachers in the Fairport district in Western New York will begin the initiative shortly, and three more North Country schools will launch in late summer or early fall.

Donald Mesibov, founder and director of the Institute for Learning Centered Education, said the school districts are designing plans to engage and motivate students to learn despite the hardships of poverty and trauma.

He told Jenne the $20,000 in state funding she secured for the program allowed the initiative to move forward.

"If it weren't for you, none of us this would have happened. That gave us the confidence to move forward. We're targeting poverty, but we are also talking about families living with trauma. We're really talking about best practices," Mesibov said.

April Charleson, a veteran English teacher at Massena's J. William Leary Junior High School, and her mother, Marlene Pickering, made presentations at the workshop and shared their experiences with Jenne.

Charleson wrote a book of poetry focused on her memories of the feelings and experiences she had growing up in poverty and “having to attend school wearing the same dress every day.” She has also founded a nonprofit, Lifted Out of Poverty, that is working with a small group of female high school students in the Massena Central School District.

Her mother was also raised in poverty and raised four children in difficult circumstances, but she has broken the cycle which had engulfed her family for generations. She currently is employed by a nonprofit in Canton.

"I feel I did the best I could. As a welfare mom, there were a lot of struggles and people look down on you. I wanted to do better. I read my whole life even though I dropped out of school when I as a teenager," Pickering noted.

She said she went back to school to earn her degree and then attended Mater Dei College after a tragedy in her family led her to reevaluate her priorities.

"I'm doing it for them, not me," she said, referring to her children and grandchildren.

Charleson said teachers she talked with at the workshop were thrilled to see a "human piece" play an important role in the initiative.

"I feel we have pushed the human piece aside as we focused on data. We're going back to being human. That's good for teachers too," she noted.

Mesibov said the presentation made by Charleson and her mother helped teachers better understand what it is like to grow up with limited means, and the initiative's aim is to provide teachers with successful strategies to reach children living in poverty or experiencing trauma in their lives.

"Most of our teachers have never had training in this," Mesibov pointed out.

Ogdensburg teachers Hillary Shelly, a middle school special education teacher, and Bethany Haynes, a fifth-grade teacher, said they are enthused about the new initiative.

"This is targeting our students living in poverty, approximately 62 percent of our students, as well as adding in children with adverse childhood experiences. It's so much broader than previous programs. We're going to be reaching every classroom. This is a priority in our district and is going to lead to a climate shift in our buildings," Haynes predicted.

Mesibov suggested school districts have approached poverty in a compartmentalized manner in the past.

He said he wants the lessons to be “always on the mind of teachers in the classroom. The students have to be able to believe their teachers care about them."

Jenne said she walked away from the meeting inspired by the willingness of Charleson and Pickering to share their experience of living in poverty. Their story, according to Jenne, resonates with many North Country families.

She said their life story shows the importance of stressing the value of education and the personal strength people can find by living with adversity. "The willingness of people to talk about their experiences can be invaluable," Jenne stressed.

"It's encouraging that this initiative is being embraced by the teachers. I hope educators find this program useful in reaching some of their students. Sometimes we need to step back from the test-driven environment to try and reach children who come from challenging circumstances," Jenne said.

"While many things have changed over the years, the realities of poverty have not. We need to do everything we can to remove the barriers of poverty that are essential to making sure every child can benefit from our public education system," she added.