After-school Meetings:

Educators agree that many middle schools do not adequately prepare students for the challenges of high school. More than just academic preparedness, much of a student's success is dependent upon their ability to adjust to the peer-social environment. This is something that schools have difficulty preparing middle school students for as they transition to high school.

During adolescence, the need for peer affirmation and affiliation becomes increasingly important. Too often students attempt the transition without having the support of strong positive affiliation groups or adult-guided structures. The void is filled with peer groups that are not always constructive. The time period after school, before parents return home from work, is a time when teens are unsupervised and have a surplus of unstructured time. This is often when teens engage in risky behavior that can lead to juvenile justice contacts, teen pregnancy, and/or substance abuse.

Morning Star Rising provides an environment where girls can fulfill the need for peer affiliation in a positive and pro-social format that keeps them "safe" during this dangerous after school time period. The adult-guided meetings, which can include hands-on activities, free-form discussions, guest presenters from the community, arts projects, or community-based learning experiences, provide a place for girls to develop the social, interpersonal skills necessary to succeed in high school and beyond.

The varied activities at the meetings are designed to develop the four phases of the unique curriculum.  An exploration of the past in the first phase prepares the girls to imagine a personal vision of the future in Phase Three.  And a focus on the personal power of assets and resources in Phase Two provides the foundation for the understanding and creation of social power in Phase Four.

Field Trips and Enrichment Activities:

Several times a year , Morning Star Rising coordinates a weekend field trip to enrich the themes of the four-phase curriculum that are explored in the after-school meetings. After-school field trips are also a regular part of the program. The field trips provide community-based experiences that create an important balance to the school-based component of the program. They allow the girls to look backward, project forward, develop their personal strengths, and envision how that strength can be transformed into a social role.

Field trips expose girls to an array of community events and experiences. Morning Star girls have gone on field trips to:

• Texas Folklife Resources Museum
• Institute of Texan Cultures and the San Jose Mission (San Antonio)
• Aztlan Dance Company performance
• Seton Hospital Open House - to tour the surgical suites and learn about healthcare careers
• The annual Austin Powwow and American Indian Heritage Festival
• Austin Lyric Opera's production of "Carmen"
• Walking tour of the Blunn Creek Wilderness Nature Preserve
• The 40-Acres Fest at the University of Texas - were hosted by Beta Alpha sorority
• Cine Las Americas Film Festival, "Emerging Filmmakers" Youth Day
• The Austin Nursing Center "Senior Games" - helped our neighbors, Austin Nursing Center, with whom girls have been regular volunteers all year
• St. Edward's University campus tour
• Primitive camping at Guadalupe River State Park
• Terra Toys Youth Art Gallery, "Hearts and Rockets" show - attended the show's opening to support those Morning Star girls who were exhibiting art pieces
• Explore UT!
• dress rehearsals for Ballet Austin productions
• fossil-hunting in the hills west of Austin
• Real Women Have Curves
• a walking tour of historic neighborhood sites
• The Austin Museum of Art exhibit The Road to Aztlan
• The Rhizome Collective
• The Martin Luther King, Jr Citywide March
• La Peña Art Gallery
• The LBJ Library
• Volente Beach Water Park as guests of A Glimmer of Hope Foundation
• three Careers in Media Panels with our partners ReelWomen
• participating as voice over talent for a KLRU Austin Now segment on Brown v. Board of Education, and a tour of the KLRU studios
• Focus on Success, a Morning Star Rising produced an all-day retreat for 9th graders held at St Edward’s University
• Women and Their Work Gallery
• MexicArte Museum
• The Soup Peddler
• The Herb Bar
• Making individual terrariums for an Earth Day display at Aveda at Barton Creek
• Career Panel presented by members of Kappa Kappa Gamma of UT Austin
  

One-on-One Mentoring:

Many adolescents need additional support in navigating the tumultuous teenage years. Developing a relationship with an adult who is independent of the family and school structures can provide confidential and personal nurturing and guidance, providing the added support necessary to setting goals, solving problems, and staying healthy as adolescence gives way to young adulthood.

Each Morning Star Rising girl is paired with a personal female mentor, who is recruited, selected and trained by the program directors. Mentors agree to meet with their mentee approximately four hours per month and make a one-year commitment to the mentor relationship.  Mentors and mentees can meet during scheduled program meetings, field trips, and summer book clubs, as well as outside the program setting.

Morning Star Rising is fortunate to have an excellent group of mentors! Women represent a wide range of ages, backgrounds, cultures, professions, and personal interests. One thing that all of our mentors have in common is a true commitment to sharing her life experiences and wisdom with a young girl who has expressed an interest in taking control of her own destiny. A small contribution of time can make a huge difference in the life of a young person. The main requirement for being a mentor is to have an open mind and warm heart.

Partners in mentoring have been Reel Women, Beta Alpha service organization at UT Austin, St Edward's University, and the Gender and Sexuality Center at UT.

If you are interested in finding out how you can apply to be a Morning Star Rising mentor, please contact us. You will find that the girls are bright, warm, creative, fun-loving human beings who give as much as they receive.

Summer Book/ Film Club

Each summer, Morning Star Rising members may join the annual summer book or film club. Often, mothers and mentors choose to join as well. Evening meetings are held once a week and a book with a lot of grist for the conversational mill is chosen. Book club selections have included:

• Bless Me Ultima, by Rudolfo Anaya
• The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, by Ann Bashares
• A Girl Named Disaster, by Nancy Farmer
• The Second Summer of the Sisterhood, by Ann Bashares

In the summer of 2006, a Summer Film Club replaced the traditional Book Club.  Because the medium of film has become such an important one and because Austin has become an important filmmaking center, the 8 weekly meetings provided opportunities for the members, two mentors and a mother, to explore a variety of film styles. These included Alfred Hitchcock and Akira Kurosawa. Themes developed some of the concepts underpinning the Morning Star Rising program. Whalerider beautifully tells the story of a Maori girl's simultaneous questioning and supporting cultural traditions as she rises to become the heir to a long line of male community elders. Everything is Illuminated explores the hold that the past has on the present, and how that power is unlocked when it is understood.

Career Exploration:

As part of the Morning Star Rising program, the girls will have opportunities to explore a variety of career paths. After-school meetings will include visitors and information about a wide range of occupations. Girls learn how individual talents and interests are translated into real-world, adult roles. In a very direct and tangible way, girls see how each adult role forms an important piece of the larger social unit.

In partnership with Reel Women, three panel discussions on Careers in Media have been presented at Fulmore Middle School and Travis High School. The girls have had the opportunity to learn about media careers such as film and video production, set decoration, costume design, acting, screen writing, animal wrangling, casting, film criticism, and more directly from women in those occupations.

In August of 2004, a Saturday afternoon Career Summit gave girls the chance to learn from several professionals about their own careers in law, veterinary medicine, physical therapy, wedding planning and publishing, as well as guidance in the college admissions process, resume writing and job interviewing techniques.

In addition, Morning Star Rising has assisted girls in acquiring summer jobs and internships. Morning Star Rising girls have held jobs through the City of Austin Summer Youth Employment program. Girls also have had opportunities to learn on-site about careers in law, journalism, healthcare, portrait photography, and music production.

If you are an entrepreneur, small business owner, or employee of a large company and believe that your workplace would like to host a Morning Star Rising girl for a part-time internship during the summer, please contact us! We would love to have your support in providing useful, community-based experiences to young girls in the community. An internship can help a young person explore how they can have a productive and satisfying life as an adult.

Community Service Projects:

A key goal of the Morning Star Rising program is to get girls to begin thinking about what kind of a role they might want to have as an adult in their community. Morning Star believes the best possible role for a young woman is one that she designs for herself, one that provides a satisfying life for her doing what she enjoys and what she is good at. Morning Star believes that the program also benefits society because it shows girls that using their talents and skills to enrich the lives of others helps our society as a whole. This focus represents a significant social paradigm shift, one that uses the values of personal fulfillment and social responsibility as the criteria for career choice.

Collective community service projects have included:

• Making handmade holiday cards and personally delivering them while caroling at the neighborhood nursing home.
• The Warm Puppy Project : collecting blankets for dogs in the local animal shelter
• Let’s Talk About Talk : organizing, publicizing, and leading a school-wide forum on hate speech
• Free the Slaves : researching current realities of worldwide slavery and then organizing, publicizing, and leading a school-wide forum to disseminate the facts and to provide the opportunity to participate in a letter-writing campaign to influence retailers and government officials to change their corporate or agency policies.

Morning Star Rising believes that young people best develop self-esteem by accomplishing something, not by being given something. Self-esteem is most powerful when it is created from one's personal power. The community service projects strengthen self-esteem among young women by allowing them to transform their personal power into social power.

Guest Presentations:

From time to time, Morning Star Rising hosts guest speakers from the community at the after-school meetings. Guests often share their life experiences or career paths. Because Morning Star works with young girls, many of the invited guests are women. These discussions with community members provide opportunities for the girls to see how people have set goals, worked toward those goals, and created self-satisfying and rewarding lives for themselves.

Community elders have shared fascinating first-hand tales of life in Texas many decades ago. These women, such as

Mrs. Juanita Lopez, also provide great examples of vibrant, delightful elderhood. Besides their gifts of sound advice and colorful stories, these women are providing invaluable role models as dynamic contributors to the social fabric.

Other guest presentations have focused on martial arts and basic self-defense, women’s health, the office of the police monitor, acting, job search and interviewing skills, diversity training, and filmmaking, for example. Contact us if you would like to discuss how you can share your story or present another topic of interest to the Morning Star Rising group.