Lawrence Rosenfeld has been volunteering with the fourth grade Pioneer Scholars here at EKC for two years now and his students always gave him rave reviews. Little did they know that across town at UNC’s school of Communications Studies where he is a Professor, his college-aged students felt the same way.

Rosenfeld was nominated by the undergraduates and was then named this year’s recipient of the prestigious 2012 William C. Friday Award for Excellence in Teaching. The award recognizes members of the UNC faculty who have exemplified excellence in inspirational teaching and have had an exceptionally positive impact on the intellectual growth of students. We could not have said it better ourselves!

Thank you, Mr. Rosenfeld, for using your free time and your, obviously, exceptional talents to benefit EKC.

“A truly special teacher is very wise, and sees tomorrow in every child’s eyes.” -

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The theme of providing fresh produce began with Emily K donor, Steve Serck of JAB Produce, who provides a gift to the students of daily fresh fruit. The students make it a habit of integrating the fruit snack into their activities and uniformly have developed a truly heightened fondness for the healthy fare.  According to Coordinator of Educational Programming, Heather Hindin, award winner San quickly became a wonderful example within the program, always trying his best, making sound choices, and showing a good sense of fairness.

Congratulations San and thank you for setting such a fine example!

We are proud to announce that Coach K has named the Emily Krzyzewski Center as his selected charity in the Infiniti Coaches’ Charity Challenge. Forty-eight top college basketball coaches will participate in the challenge which invites fans to vote for their favorite coach over an eight week period. Voters can cast their ballot through ESPN.com’s link to the Infiniti Coaches’ Charity Challenge and can vote for Coach K each day. Infiniti will contribute more than $300,000 to selected charities, with one winner receiving $100,000. Without Coach Krzyzewski’s support, the Emily K Center would not be able to offer 1,500 students and community members each month the opportunity to learn, convene and grow, or conduct its academic K to College Model, a program designed to help students achieve in school and gain entry to college.

Congratulations to Emily K Scholars to College Junior Joseph Celestin for advancing to the second round in the JROTC Academic Challenge! Joseph was part of a four person team from Hillside High who competed in a 75 question Junior ROTC competition. More than 1300 JROTC programs from across the country took part in the challenge. He finished in the top 50%, which qualified him to advance to round two to be held this coming February. Joseph has been at Emily K for the past three years and shows character and determination through this effort. If the team he competes with finishes as one of the top 40 in the next round, they will go to Washington, DC in June to attend a leadership symposium and compete face-to-face. We are proud of you Joe. Good Luck!

“We are excited to be here, too,” John said, “Sometimes when we do educational performances it will be the first time the kids have ever heard jazz instruments. Who knows, the next Dizzy Gillespie might be out in that audience.”

John is the Director of the Jazz program at Duke University and the leader of the band. He and his orchestra are committed to bringing the big band sound to student groups all over North Carolina. It is a mission they believe in so strongly that they manage to fit it in around their non-volunteer professional performances.
“We introduce each of the instruments individually to the kids, and then we get them involved in the music.”

And the students did get involved. They had an opportunity to ask questions, which included asking how much some of the instruments weighed, and how long it takes before a musician is good enough to play in concerts. The students also learned that even the familiar strains of Sesame Street and the Flintstones intro music can be jazzed up by the big band sound.

Executive Director, Adam Eigenrauch commented that it’s easy to tell that you’re reaching kids with music when the air guitar, air drums, and, in this case, air horns, come out. The program ended with John promising that he and his fellow musicians would return next year and students left with toes tapping on their way to learning even more at Emily K come 2012.

Today marks another exciting milestone in the life of the Emily K Center as Communications Coordinator Michele White celebrates her birthday. Staff gathered in the Board room to share a few laughs and a “spot of tea” with the birthday girl.

When asked what she liked most about Michele, 2nd grader Arianna said, “I liked doing reading with Ms.Michele. She’s very nice and I hope she has a great birthday!”

2nd grader Kevin added his wishes too.  “Merry Christmas… I mean Happy Birthday!  I would like to give you something special - that could be something like earrings or maybe a shirt but I can’t because I don’t have a car to go get them.  I liked being your student!  You’re exciting!”

Happy Birthday to a very special member of our Emily K Center Team!

***Michele White is the author of 99% of our blog posts so we decided that on her birthday she should get to enjoy a break from writing and instead be the “star” of a post!  She enjoyed it and we hope you do too!***

At Emily K our volunteers are a wonderfully diverse group. They are university students, having come from (depending on their semester and their schedule) Duke, UNC, NCCU and NC State. They are community members, some who have lived in Durham all their lives and view their work at EKC as a continued investment of time and commitment to their city and their neighbor families. Others have just moved to the area and hear that great work is being done at the Center. They want to put down roots and we are a great place to do just that.

Some of our volunteers work with the students every single week. Others helps with our events or our administrative endeavors. Still others offer their expertise in a particular skill area such as theater, technology, drama or sport.

Over the past five years we have had more than 700 volunteers gift us with their time at the Center. It is wonderful that a particular day has been set aside for recongititon, but at the Emily K Center, we don’t need to be reminded of how integral our volunteers are to our effort. We celebrate you each and every day. Thank you. The Emily K Students and Staff.

A few of our students in high school are serving as translators for parent meetings, which take place at the Center after students receive their first report card every fall.  Spanish speaking scholars have generously offered to donate their time to facilitate conferences with some of our families.  They volunteered to take part in an orientation and then began offering their help for the meetings of younger students.

It’s a win/win. They are glad to be of service at their own Emily K Center. And we are proud of their abilities and their generosity.