Dr. Fred Edie’s Reflections on the Shine Tutoring Center
As Harnett County struggles to regain its footing following the pandemic, students in this rural community are suffering academically as well as socially and emotionally. These students are experiencing academic losses through school shutdowns, particularly black and brown students and students living in poverty.
Pathways Towards Impact seeks to address this learning gap through the Shine Tutoring Center. The center will offer academic enrichment, a social-emotional curriculum, and partnerships with community members. The Beta Test of the Harnett County tutorial initiative will be held at Dunn Elementary School, March 20 - April 5, 2023, 3:30pm - 6:00pm.
This project began as the class project of Duke Divinity Student, Nicholas Irion, who is an ordained minister in the AME Zion Church. In the summer 2020, Nicholas participated in the Community Craft course (Parish 792) where he pitched a proposal to address the “learning gap” among elementary school students in the community of Oak Grove AME Zion Church (Erwin, NC). At the same time, Ormond Center learned about Campbell University’s similar goal in Harnett County and this expanded the project to the entire county.
Read below for a Q&A with Dr. Fred Edie who reflects on his experience with the project. Dr. Edie is the Associate Professor of the Practice of Christian Education at Duke Divinity School.
How did you get involved in the project?
I partnered in Spring 2020 with Rev. Justin Coleman at University UMC in Chapel Hill to teach a course at Duke Divinity School called “Christian Education for Public Ministry.” Justin, as a parent of black children and as one deeply committed to social justice, was keenly aware of the racialized educational achievement gap in the public schools, a gap that was growing worse in the midst of the pandemic. Justin was also working with an informal clergy group in Chapel Hill to advocate for extra educational support of children of color. Our class took on this issue in the effort to understand its root causes and then presented findings to a gathering of community clergy plus members of the school system and local police.
Two years later, as we were beginning to contemplate version 2.0 of the course, Bruce Grady contacted me out of the blue to describe a vision for a tutorial program for mostly brown and black, poor, and rural elementary children in Harnett County, NC. I’ve admired Bruce for a long time, but have never worked with him closely. I quickly discovered that Bruce and others were planning to do what our class had only begun to envision two years prior. I was blown away by the scale of their vision for Shine Tutorial, its collaborative nature between DDS, Campbell University, and congregational partners, and by their desire to address not only intellectual growth in students but to unearth potential assets in these kids’ social and cultural worlds, to develop their emotional resiliency, and to teach them to dream.
With Bruce’s support the second edition of the DDS course featured a class trip to Dunn Elementary School where our students met children, school staff, and also faculty from Campbell. Together we listened to school faculty and staff describe the enormous challenges to teaching and learning in this setting as well as their compassion and hope for their students. Justin and I spent the remainder of the semester helping our own students to reflect on their readings on overcoming educational challenges in marginal communities and actual experiences of those challenges in central North Carolina. The main assignment of the course was for small groups of students to create a unit of curriculum to be used in this tutorial setting and to articulate educational and theological rationale for this sort church/public practice. The projects were amazing—creative, indicative of our students’ strong learning about education in this setting, and full of Christian compassion.
This spring some of the students from the course will lead a trial run of this enrichment curriculum in partnership with Campbell students who will be focusing on literacy. The goal down the road is to equip members of congregations and communities to lead these tutorial sessions.
What intrigues you about this project?
The folks who conjured this project are dreaming big! This is a God-sized vision. I’m also drawn to the deeply collaborative nature of the project, the ways it draws upon different kinds of expertise. Ultimately, however, our part of its success won’t depend upon experts, it will invite Christians in congregations and other community members into tutorial roles, engaging in concrete acts of caring for other people’s children. In addition to addressing social injustice this engagement offers at least a glimpse of a Kingdom where children are at the center.
By Gerry Dincher from Hope Mills, NC - Downtown Dunn, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=34481477
Why does this work matter?
In addition to what I offer immediately above, this way of practicing ministry envisions the church becoming a servant to the entire community. Rhetoric aside, almost nobody really cares for poor children, so seeking to support their growth can’t possibly be confused with status or power seeking or other popular heresies. Instead, it is actually possible through this endeavor for Christians to be caught in the act of witnessing to a winsome God. The project holds out the promise of supportive relations between persons of different races, classes, and generations; it can play a role in reweaving communities of mutual support. Finally, the project is missional in the best sense; it assumes that God is acting now for the flourishing of all children; those who join in are sharing in God’s mission.
What else would you want folks to know about this work?
The ministry of Christian education has lately been devoted to training young or new church members. This is fine so far as it goes but risks ignoring the field’s history as a missional enterprise. The first Sunday Schools in England were devoted to the care and education of poor children whose parents worked industrial jobs seven days a week. In addition, contrary to the present day, many congregations in the mid 20th century could articulate a vision for Christian support of public schooling as well as reasons to teach their church members how to engage as people of faith in matters of public policy and social justice. At present many congregations are rediscovering the gift and obligation of supporting school children; we are only riding the Spirit’s very big wave.
Ormond Center is grateful for its Duke Divinity School partners who helped make Shine Tutorial possible including:
Rev. Nicholas Irion, MDiv ‘21, Learning Consultant and Student Engagement Coordinator, Academic Resource Center, Duke Undergraduate Education
Rev. Dr. Bruce Grady, MDiv ‘94, Executive Presbyter - New Hope Presbytery
Dr. Frederick Edie, Associate Professor of Practice of Christian Education
DDS Students enrolled in Christian Education for Public Ministry (fall 2022)
Dr. Justin Coleman, Consulting Faculty, Sr. Pastor University UMC in Chapel Hill
Rev. Daniel Corpening, Director of Field Education
T.J. Bryant, Jr, MDiv ‘23 Shalom Fellow, entering the DDS ThD program (fall 2023)
Rev. Chris West, MDiv ‘23, Pathways Towards Impact Intern, appointed Executive Director of the Shine Tutorial Center upon graduation
Stephanie Cassell, MDiv ‘23, Pathways Towards Impact Intern, responsible for developing the social and emotional learning curriculum
Phyllis Thornton, MDiv ‘23, Field Education Student, Kipling UMC in Harnett County
We are also grateful for our external partners including:
Campbell University’s School of Education, Dean Alfred Bryant, Dr. Chris Goodwin, and Dr. Terrie Hampton-Jones
Dunn Elementary School, the 200 student volunteers and literacy/math teachers for the tutoring center
Harnett County Public Schools
Partnering congregations of Harnett County including:
Rev. Justin Jamis (Pastor of Kipling United Methodist Church)
Dr. Rosa Smith-Williams (Pastor of Norrington AME Zion Church)
Bishop Reginald Hinton (Pastor of Mount Pisgah Harnett Church)
