The Franklin Reporter & Advocate Eight Villages, One Community
Thanksgiving came two days early for students enrolled in the school district’s Road To Success program.
Road To Success is an alternative high school program, the mission of which is “prepare enrolled students to graduate high school and be college and/or career ready, by providing individualized course studies, social and emotional learning, counseling services, and a supportive school atmosphere,” according to its web site.
During the Friends and Family Thanksgiving Celebration, the students and their guests were treated to a hot meal, complete with dessert. Awards were also given to several students for their achievements.
The event’s keynote speaker was Rod Brundidge, a vice-principal at Franklin High School, who stressed to the students the importance of getting an education.
“One of my favorite quotes is by Malcolm X,” he said. “Education is your passport to the future. But tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today. And Frederick Douglass, there is no progress without struggle.”
Brundidge told the students his own story of starting out as a teacher in a youth detention facility, then being offered better jobs and adding post-graduate degrees, until he settled in Franklin in 2002.
“But I had to fight, I had to grind,” he said. “If it was easy, everybody would do it.”
“Sometimes you learn more and you grind more,” Brundidge said. “But if you’ve got to work hard for something, you appreciate it more.”
Nikki Tatum, the RTS program director, said the event is one she looks forward to every year “because we get an opportunity to fellowship not only with our students and the staff, but also our community partners, board members. We have guests here from the Franklin Youth Center who gifted two gifts for two of our RTS families, and it’s just wonderful to see.”
“We have a lot of family members this year, which I’m really excited about,” she said. “And every year we do it in the hopes of bringing more family members out and not just mom and dad, but cousins and aunties and uncles. Just giving us the opportunity to celebrate the students.”
“I say this every year, but this year we have a really good bunch of students, and it just gives us an opportunity to recognize their awesomeness,” she said. “You know, we have a number of students who made honor rolls this summer period.”
“We have a number of students who have less than five days absent, which to most people is like, what? They’re not perfect attendance? No, that’s why some of them are here,” Tatum said. “So for a student who, let’s say when they were at the high school, had excessive absences, for them to come here and only be absent maybe two or three times, that’s big.”
“So we try to celebrate the big things, but also the small things that are sometimes overlooked,” she said.
“I’m just blessed, and I’m happy that I have an opportunity to run this program,” she said. “I think we’ve come a long way, and every year I just look forward to just growing and growing.”
Tatum said the program is growing, and this year introduced an adaptive TV production program, and also strengthened its English as a Second Language program with the hiring of a full-time ESL teacher.
“The ESL program is important because as our population is changing, we have to change to meet the needs of the students that we’re getting,” she said. The new teacher “works directly with students who don’t speak English and are learning, and she’s able to provide them a direct one-on-one support.”
“I just am happy that we’re able to make this a safe space for our kids and their family members and friends who came to fellowship with us today,” she said.
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