 I'd like to welcome our viewers to Ignite the Spark. My name is Shar-Spec Pachniak and I am the founder and CEO of a program called Horizons for Girls. We are in our eighth, going on our eighth year. It's been a long time, I lose track. But we work with teenagers, middle school and high school students that are referred to us from teachers, from families, from doctors, even students that have heard about the program and decide they think it would help. We work with students with the ultimate goal being that they graduate high school and have a plan for what they're gonna do after that. Maybe it's college, maybe it's the services, maybe it's an internship, but they've got an idea of what they wanna do once they do graduate high school. It's the beginning of a new year and I wanted to spend a little bit of time talking to my favorite person, Carla, you and I have worked together for a long time. I still remember a mural that we were trying to put on, I think on Central High. It's hanging there right now. Yeah, I know that took forever to try and get that approved. That's 11 years ago now. I know, I know it's amazing. But when I started reflecting about all the resources that we try to help our students tap into, especially at the school district, it was like, wow. And we were just talking about that before we started about the fact that if they don't wanna graduate high school, it's their own fault because it's out there. If there are so many great resources. Absolutely. The avenues to a high school diploma in 2019 are plentiful. We have so many different paths and routes that a student pretty much regardless of what they're coming to us with can achieve that goal. Well, and I'm trying to right now, of course, my long-term memory, short-term memory is kind of, but I know that there is mental health programming that the school now offers. I know it started at Random Lake. Now, Sheboygan has it. What does that refer to? Well, the Sheboygan area school district has always provided mental health support. All of our pupil services are school counselors, our school psychologists, our social workers, our school nurses. We all have four years provided support to our students, but thanks to a wonderful partnership between United Way and Lakeshore Community Health and Mental Health America, there's a new program in the middle and high schools in the school district called PATH, P-A-T-H PATH. It stands for providing access to healing. It's not a new concept. Realistically, at any given time, we have dozens of students in our schools who are struggling either with diagnosable mental health condition or life circumstances that are traumatizing, challenging, overwhelming. And the thought behind the PATH program is oftentimes these same students don't have access to mental health treatment in the community. And the reasons for that are many. Students can have no transportation, parents don't have transportation, waiting lists for treatment, poor or no insurance coverage, expensive copays that families can't afford. There's a dozen reasons, but whatever it may be, accessing mental health treatment in the community clinical mental health treatment is difficult for them. So PATH brings mental health clinicians into the schools and they provide therapy during the student's school day right in their school. So it's a beautiful way to access the treatment that they need. And it's a beautiful opportunity for our school district to form these really nice partnerships with Lakeshore Community Health, Ozaki Community Therapies, and of course United Way and Mental Health America. Well, and to me it would seem maybe that there's less of a stigma if that service is provided right there as part of the school day as opposed to, I need to be excused from class because I have to go see my shrink. Yep. You know, it's just part of your school day. Our students who are involved in PATH at the schools that I serve, and the program is full. I mean, it's at capacity. We're looking at expanding it because we have waiting lists already for it. But the students that are at my schools, they know our therapist. He's Frank. Hey, I'm going to see Frank. And Frank is, while he's not an employee of the Sheboygan area school district in any way, shape, or form, he is a small part of the culture now at our buildings in the same way that the teaching staff or the pupil service staff are, that's Frank. And because there are more and more students becoming involved in this program, that stigma is, while certainly still present, it's getting a notch bitten out of it because it's just a part of the school day. To me, that I find that acceptance of those services coming into the school district, into the school buildings, awesome. I mean, I do that also. I'm at South High School, or I'm stopping at a central high, or I'm going up to North High School. It is no criteria, I don't want to say criteria, but it's like, oh, okay, Shar's here and Shar's there. Hey, Shar. Good to see you. Yeah, exactly. I'm just part of that whole village supporting those kids. And to me, that is really neat. And that's something that's changed over the years. I think when I started in the district in 1999, I don't think we were as skilled at building those partnerships, making those connections and using the village to raise our children in them. We've gotten better at that. And because of that, the access again to all different types of support for our students has blossomed. Well, in mental health America, don't they do some mindfulness programs in the schools too? You bet. Brianna Hoesterberg is a wonderful woman who works for Mental Health America. And she has partnered with several of our schools and is coming in and teaching the students mindfulness practices, elementary all the way up to high school and helping them challenge their understanding of what mindfulness is and how it can help them regulate their emotion, find places of calmness within themselves versus necessarily environmental places of calm. And just another great partnership that we've all been able to support. Right. And then I look at the shops or all of the, the industrial, to me it was the boys, the girls I forgot to do that stuff with, the boys got to go in and do shop, metal shop and woodworking, that kind of thing. And that's open now to all the students. It's crazy. Have you been to North or South? Yes. And have you seen their manufacturing? I know, it's incredible. Beautiful. I certainly am not an expert on that piece. I work with people. But I walk by there every day and I'm like, in awe of these amazing machines that do these amazing things and that our students have access to that. It used to be that you had access to maybe one or two fabrication, welding stuff. Now there's literally like an entire wing at the school where students can learn about these very, very, very important vocational callings. And the thing is they lead to jobs. They lead directly to sustaining good jobs. And it's just, it's exciting. It's an exciting time to be in education and to see all of these community partnerships. And I know that LTC has this mobile unit. It's a trailer that they take around and they come and they visit us actually at the church once a year and the girls get to go in there and they're doing simulated welding and computer programming and they love it. I mean, they've been asking me again. The girls that know that it comes once a year, they've said, when is it coming? So they love that kind of thing. Another great example of partnerships. There are opportunities now at the high school level, regardless of which high school you go to, to actually graduate with college credit. We have students graduating every year with credits in the bank already. And that's a financial gain for them. We don't have to come up with the money to pay for those three, six, nine credits. And it's an opportunity for them then to move quickly in the direction of their life goals and either their jobs or the next step in their education. Yeah. The other thing I want to, before I forget, I want to make sure I mentioned last evening I got to go to the city council meeting and I got to accept a proclamation from the mayor. January happens to be the national mentoring month. And so I was able to accept this proclamation from the mayor. And this is not just for horizons. It's for any program out there that's doing any type of mentoring. I mean, this talks about statistically when the students have that support system around them, their success is gonna be a much easier path. So that to me is cool. I mean, again, I think of big brothers, big sisters and their lunch buddy program. Incredible. I was on the phone this morning with Head Start wanting to know if they could do a referral to horizons. And so I gave her some other suggestions. You know, we talked about rainbow kids. We talked about big brothers, big sisters and those resources that are out there and trying to access them and make sure that that student is gonna be successful. That's a big, big thing. And it's tough for parents. I mean, how many of these families are single parent families? You know, and they're working multiple jobs or trying to keep that family together. And that is really, really tough. So whenever you can help them access those different resources, that's huge. We talked even about before we started about the, it used to be, and I forget what the name of it was, a closet that they had. It's on high school. But you were saying that you still have some of those resources that there's a request for. We do. So several of the high schools have food pantries and our food pantries aren't necessarily just the typical non-perishable goods that you'd find in a food pantry. We have a lot of the personal hygiene supplies, the shampoos, the deodorants, the conditions. We have laundry detergent. Laundry detergent is expensive. And we have laundry detergent. And just knowing that if I'm meeting with a family and we're talking about perhaps their child struggles, but in that conversation, I learned that it's not just the child that is struggling. You know, you've got that single parent where there's one income coming in and it just does not spread as far as it needs to. And yet sometimes the fact that there is an income, it maybe puts some of the other benefits out of reach. You know, their food benefits might be very small amounts. So it's nice to be able to write then and there, say, hey, come on, let's go check out our food pantry. Let's send you home with some stuff that you need and hats and mittens and gloves and a wigwam. God bless them. Donated a ton of socks. And it's just, it's really nice. Again, those partnerships, right? To be able to have a conversation with the family in here. This is what's going on. And not only be able to say, well, here's an agency that might be able to help. Here's a program that might be able to help. And oh, by the way, we have this right here as well. And just kind of making it the whole idea of access, taking away the barriers that get in the way of families getting to what they need so that their kids are able to be in school, learn, focus all of their energy on that algebra assignment versus all the other things that are heavy on their heart. Well, and if I recall correctly, I've seen where students even have access to showers if they wanna get cleaned up in the morning before the school day starts. We have, so at the two main high schools, we have wonderful public locker rooms, thanks again to donations and partnerships. And our students are able to access those public locker rooms and the shower to take care of their hygiene needs no less so than if you and I were going there to work out, right? It's not just for the public that is there from, you know, 5 a.m. to 7 a.m. working out. It's for any of our students that may need that as well. And that to me is incredible because I recall working with a family, thank goodness it was during the summer but their utilities were off. And this young lady wanted to clean up but she, there's no hot water. And the only thing I could suggest to her was to fill up a pan with water and put it outside in the sunshine and hopefully it would start to warm up so she could clean up. But at that time, that was the only resource available to her, unfortunately. Yeah, and who wants to take a cold shower? Who wants to do that? Yeah, I'm not one of those polar bear people that's gonna jump in the lake. Yeah. But I just, you know, and I guess businesses need to, community members, businesses, anybody, really should just step back and just take a moment and think about what they have access to. And is that something maybe that might help a student? You never know. The truest sense of community is interactive and it implies that we do that, that we take care of each other and that we share gifts, share our time talents, treasures, and yeah, take that step back and say, is there one thing, is there one little thing that maybe my business could do to support? Not only our young people, but all of our community members or is there something that I can do to support a group of people in our community? It's absolutely amazing when I think of the community members that have come in and shared their stories with students. I don't know if you are familiar with the young lady, her name is Melissa Mooney, local young lady. She happens to be a model for Harley Davidson. She's a national model and she came in and she shared her story with the students. I bet you they loved that. They loved it and the story she had to share so related to what the students were going through it was incredible. So I'm looking forward to again, the opportunity for her to come back or think of some of the ladies at the church that both you and I know that were nurses in the stories that they share about the things that they went through. It's incredible because that really helps the student realize that what they're experiencing is not something that's never happened to anybody else. It's not unique to them. It's happened in a variety of places and these people have overcome. A unique trivia fact that I'll share with you, Claudette, who we both knew, did you know that she was an extra in the movie A Star is Born? Shut the front door. Are you kidding me? No, I'm serious, her and her son. Oh my gosh. How incredible. You need to get her back and tell her story. That's amazing. I was not aware of that. Yes, I was just talking to her the other day and it was like, oh my God. So here's this wonderful woman. She does this thing for us every year, Christmas time, where she buys movie passes that we give to the girls as a Christmas gift and she gives us enough passes that the mentors can take girls to the movie and there's gift cards for snacks. She does that every year for us. And then when she did that this year, she said, oh, by the way. And I said, no, get out of here. And she said, no, seriously. But you want to go and see the movie again? No, I want to go and watch and see if I can find her in there somewhere. So I was like, I can't believe it because you just never know. Those unique people that are right here and then let's start looking at some of the companies, national companies that are right here and how much they support education in so many different ways. Whether that's Coller or Walroth or Miesfeldt, me or... Maturity, and we have so many wonderful, wonderful companies that get that idea of community. Yeah, that partnership, we're all in this together. That to me is cool. And what's really neat about that is I'm working with the students as I'm now getting students that are coming back and saying, I want to come back, I want to help. So I have, right now, I've got three students, X students, graduates of horizons that are peer to peer mentors. So they come back and they share their story with the student, which is awesome because again, I mean, I can share what I went through when I went to high school, but that's a long, long time ago. And if they can talk to a student that maybe has just graduated from high school in the last couple of years, and they can talk about things that they were going through at school and now the success that they're having, the challenges that they maybe still are having, but I look at students that are going to college or internships, it's incredible. It's absolutely incredible. Opportunities, opportunities. It's all out there. We were talking about how, if you can find that fire in your belly, if you can find it and figure out what it's burning for, high school diploma is easy. And anything after that is yours to take. Denzel Washington always says, the second you think about doing something, the second you think about achieving something, you already have, it's already yours to claim. Just by thinking about it, it's yours. All you have to do is find the avenues to do it and that fire in your belly to pursue it. And I love that idea. You know, the idea that if I think about it and I think about myself doing it, it's already mine. I just have to go and get it. Yeah, a fun thing we did a few months ago with the girls is we actually went into Lucas Hall and we took masking tape and we laid it on the floor to simulate your lifespan. And we showed your birth and your elementary school and your high school. And we said now, especially high school because it seems high schoolers go, oh, I can't deal with this, it's just, oh my gosh. And it's like, now look at what you've got for your whole life in your high school time. It's only four years, it's only that little chunk of the masking tape. You know, you've got all those other things that you can do. And I love sharing that with students when I talk about the different things I've done. I mean, I was an Avon lady, oh my God, I went door to door selling. That was way before the year. Oh, I could still see you doing that. I really could. I think, I bet you found success with that. Yes, I did. I was a group leader. I actually oversaw other sales reps but it was all done without the internet. It was door to door with blue books and... We're really dating ourselves, Sharf. We're talking about Avon ladies. No, I know. Or working in a doctor's office or working at the children's museum. All those, the literacy council in 22 years in radio. Oh my God. But again, trying to get the students to realize that anything is possible. And even if you don't achieve that high school diploma in that four years, that doesn't mean it still can't be achieved. There are still avenues even after those four years. Exactly. To keep going, to claim whatever it is that you have named yours already. Yeah, because you've got all of that time in your life to do all kinds of different things. And that to me is really exciting. Real quickly, I'm gonna start to tell people about some of the things coming up this year. We have the Elkhart Lake Triathlon coming up again this year. That's the beginning of June. We'll help again at broad days. These are all things that help us raise money. We'll do our 5K to fight bullying. And I've already talked to Roy Perung. He will be our spokesperson again. Again here, local stardom right here in Sheboygan. And I forget how many, tens of thousands of miles he's run. I mean, oh my God, yeah. And he was bullied. And he has talked to the students about what that was like being bullied. So again, bringing those community members in to talk about those things, awesome. Definitely visit the website, horizonsforgirls.com and look at the different things that are coming up in the activities and think about being a mentor. And I don't think if you've got something coming up at the school that you wanna mention. Oh my goodness, there's always things going on. Nothing in particular, but go to the Sheboygan area school district website and pull down the tab and look at the different schools. And each school has its own website and with what's going on at that school. Of course, all the holiday festivities are over and now there's new things coming up for spring. So go ahead and look. They've actually got a calendar there that you can watch everything. Yep, you can click on something and get the information you need about that particular event. Yeah, excellent. But definitely, get involved. It might be only a couple of hours a day. It might be an hour or two a week or a month to that because, I mean, share your resources. That to me is awesome. I don't know. The people I've met doing this, I mean, that's what I really love sometimes is I get to learn stuff when I schedule a speaker that comes in and talks to the students. And I go, really? I didn't know that. It to me is just absolutely amazing. So you never know. Look at the website, contact us, watch what we're doing. And I almost forgot, Faith our wonderful therapy dog is hiding under the table. But definitely, there's different ways to get involved. There's different ways to light that spark, to find that feeling in the gut that each student has. You just need to excite them. And they can be anything they want to be. And that to me is awesome. I look forward to talking to everybody again next time. But again, ignite the spark and please get involved somehow. Thank you, Carla. Thank you for having me again.