By Barbara Kessler, TJJD Communications
Judy Davis was disheartened when she heard that in-person visitation at Gainesville State School was being temporarily suspended to slow the spread of COVID-19.
While she agreed with the limitations for the sake of public health, she worried she could no longer deliver a promised sketchpad to a youth she was mentoring, nor would she be able to see him.
And then, snap! She realized that through a combination of old and new technologies, she could navigate this new reality. She popped over to the local post office to mail the sketchpad to her artistic mentee. She tossed in another pad, this one with a grid, for another mentee, thinking maybe now would be a good time for him to discover drawing.
Next, she called Robin Motley, Community Relations Coordinator at Gainesville, and learned she’d be able to video chat with her mentees via Google Duo. After another call to her daughter, Davis had the app installed and had visited with each of “her” boys.
“You never know if you’ll be that one important person,” said Davis, a retiree who has mentored at Gainesville State School since 2000. One caring person can help another to turn their life around, she said, noting that many of the youth she’s mentored come from homes beset by addiction, neglect or domestic violence.
“The life that some of these kids have, they really do break your heart,” she said, explaining that she tries to help the youth envision a positive path forward, free of the dysfunction.
“My advice is ‘you only have to make one right decision, and that’s the next one. So make sure the next decision you make is the right decision for your future’,” she said.
Davis plans to stay in touch during this period of social distancing to show the youth that mentors will be there for them, though she suspects the youth may actually adjust to the changes in routine more easily than the mentors.
“This is new to them, but it’s like a different chapter in their book. For the rest of us, it’s like a whole new book.”
McFadden Ranch Halfway House
Like Davis, Lincoln Carroll was dismayed when he learned that mentors with Must Care, the non-profit group he founded, would not be able to visit McFadden Ranch Halfway House in Flower Mound for the foreseeable future.
While the suspension of visitation was necessary, the change meant that on Tuesday nights, the music would literally stop. The program Carroll had initiated, led by local music educator Jamal Umer, would be on hiatus. More than a dozen youth had been participating in the informal classes, with Umer coaching them in rap composition and mixing.
“I think that it’s one of their favorites,” Carroll said. “We hate that Umer cannot go there now, but we fully understand.” Carroll is working on a possible work-around to restart the classes using video conferencing or YouTube. In the meantime, he sent the youth at McFadden a gift of some $200 worth of board games and art supplies.
“We like helping. We’re blessed in different ways and are fortunate enough to be able to give back and happy to help,” said Carroll, a financial services expert who lives in Frisco with his wife and 12-year-old son.
He founded We Care to work with at-risk youth in schools and juvenile detention.
“I grew up for 17 years and I did not have a father in my life,” he said. “I always wanted to give back. Our mission is to give a ‘father’ to the fatherless. A lot of problems in society stem from a father not being around.”
Evins Regional Juvenile Center
I have you and your Mama and brothers in prayer, M. . . . Stay strong with your goal of that purple shirt, if you can make it. You have to be smart and think before you act - and you'll see that everything will work out for you. I am sending you another copy of how to pray the Rosary - it is very important! . . . Saludos!! – excerpt of a letter to a youth from a volunteer mentor
Five-hundred miles across the state, volunteers at Evins Regional Juvenile Center, in Edinburg, share that understanding that boys need father figures. Sometimes, mentors can help with that, says Ernesto Duran, a volunteer with the Catholic Diocese of Brownsville.
Duran’s group serves Catholic youth at Evins with one-on-one mentoring and also delivers a meal once a month to a wider group of young men. A Baptist mentoring group shares this effort, serving a special monthly meal to the remaining portion of Evins’ youth.
After learning about the visitation restrictions to curb COVID-19, the Diocese volunteers decided to begin writing letters to maintain ties to their mentees. Each volunteer will be writing to three to six boys, so that the 100 to 120 youth to whom they normally serve meals will each receive correspondence.
“We’re telling them not to worry, that we’re here, and not to worry about the virus. Even out here in ‘the free’, as they call it, we’re sheltering in our own houses. So we feel what they feel sometimes,” Duran said.
Reflecting on this time in which people must take strong actions to protect others, Duran said the mentors and youth may even be building stronger bonds as they share their thoughts on paper.
“When we mentor on the religious side, we only reach some of the boys (who ask for religious mentoring and training) but right now, we’re reaching a larger group,” he said. “We’re trying to motivate them to have a little patience and just giving a little bit of hope.”
Barbara Kessler, TJJD Communications
It was just another day as Superintendent Michelle Havranek and Assistant Superintendent Emily Shaw began the drive home after work at TJJD’s McLennan County State Juvenile Correctional Facility at Mart.
Until it wasn't.
As the two reached a rise in Highway 164, they confronted a chaotic scene. A van and a truck had crashed head on moments before. The van, its front end crushed, had spun onto its side and was blocking the middle of the road. The truck had rolled into the ditch, and in each vehicle, a driver was trapped.
Havranek ran to the truck and saw that the young women driver, conscious but injured, was trapped by the steering wheel and tightly belted in. She told Shaw they would need to cut the woman out.
Luckily, Shaw had a box cutter in her car. She went to work cutting the seatbelts around the woman, while noticing flames growing near the floorboard inside the pickup.
Havranek rushed to the van and pulled out the passenger. She could not reach the trapped driver, but saw that flames were threatening that vehicle as well.
“We were all afraid that the cars were going to blow up,” Shaw said.
Havranek raced along the road, appealing to drivers for a fire extinguisher. The driver of an 18-wheeler produced an extinguisher and they used it to tamp down the flames.
“I was worried about the fire more than anything else,” said Havranek, a former police officer who took the helm at the Mart facility last year.
Meanwhile, Shaw eased the distraught woman from the truck in the ditch. Tugging quickly, while apologizing for causing any pain, Shaw lifted her through the truck window. She took the woman away from the burning truck. Havranek stepped in to help administer first aid to the woman in the other vehicle, using her shirt to staunch the woman’s head wound.
Shaw and Havranek resumed “running up and down 164 asking for fire extinguishers,” Shaw said.
By then, more TJJD staff had arrived to help. Officer Nicole Hoo of the Office of Inspector General (OIG), also on her way home, was handed the fire extinguisher that Havranek acquired from the driver of the 18-wheeler, and assisted with tamping the flames.
Two more OIG officers, Tom Hamilton and Sherry Kingrey, arrived, having answered Hoo’s call for assistance. Coach Howard Anglin and OIG staff Francine Hobbs, answered Havranek’s call to bring fire extinguishers.
“It was great teamwork,” Havranek said.
The local volunteer fire department and EMTs arrived. Firefighters squelched the flames threatening the vehicles and rescuers with Jaws of Life equipment pulled the driver of the van to safety.
“It was scary,” Shaw said, “but God put us there for a reason, for us to be able to help.”
(Photo front to back: Officer Nicole Hoo, Asst. Supt. Emily Shaw, Officer Tom Hamilton and Supt. Michelle Havranek)
By Barbara Kessler, TJJD Communications
Burritos were a hit. As were the omelets, chicken carbonara, and pancakes made from scratch.
But perhaps the most memorable dish was the fancy grilled cheese sandwich made with apples. At first, the boys in cooking class at Willoughby Halfway House rolled their eyes and laughed at the concept, said Cassie Green-Stephens, the volunteer instructor who created a weekly cooking program for Willoughby about eight months ago.
“They were like this is insane -- and then they liked it!” she said. They made their fancy grilled cheese sandwiches with a choice of cheddar, Swiss or Havarti cheeses and ham or turkey and maybe tomatoes, but also, those apples. She encouraged them to try it. ”I think all of them liked them, even the pickiest liked it! That felt like a big triumph.”
Green-Stephens is hoping for another triumph amid a difficult time with a virtual online program she’s created for the boys.
As Texas grapples with the coronavirus outbreak, TJJD recently restricted visitors to facilities. That means cooking classes, and other volunteer-led activities, have been suspended. Green-Stephens has risen to the moment with a plan to continue the meditation that she leads at the start of every class.
She made her first virtual meditation, on an ocean theme, soon after Volunteer Coordinator Y. Diane Caldwell notified her of the new rules and she plans to create a new one each week.
The 10-minute meditations may even be especially helpful during this time of uncertainty. They will help her maintain an important connection with the boys she mentors at Willoughby, but can be used by any TJJD facility, Green-Stephens said.
A health coach, a cross between a nutritionist and a life coach, Green-Stephens gives talks to groups on healthful living. She and her husband also produce and sell an elderberry syrup. She’s both an expert and practitioner of proactive health measures, sound nutrition and daily meditation.
And the latter, she says, is integral.
“What I hope with the meditation is that it’s giving them a skill,” she said. “I teach it to them and we talk about why it’s helpful.”
Working with the halfway house teens each week – about a dozen participate in her classes – she sees their efforts to gain control of sometimes turbulent emotions. She tells them that meditation can be a tool in the toolbox to help when they’re feeling down or even angry.
”Meditation helps create a pause between your thought and your action – that’s something I really try to hammer home with them. I don’t know why they’re in the facility, but if you can train your brain to not act on impulse, that can really help.”
Like the cooking classes, the meditation helps the boys build confidence. The quiet focus grounds and centers them, and can break through to the youth who’s tense or wont to participate.
”I see kids who are just grrrrr, mad. So I ask them to sit in meditation,” she said; the group murmurs an “Om“ or “Ohm” mantra and some of the boys may even giggle, which is fine. “And then all of a sudden, they want to come and participate in the cooking.”
“There’s so much power just in the meditation.”
By Barbara Kessler, TJJD Communications
There’s nothing youth at TJJD look forward to more than a visit from family. And even before COVID-19 became a household word, virtual visitation via smartphones or digital tablets was an important way to help youth keep in touch with loved ones when parents, guardians or mentors could not visit in person.
As the agency readied plans to protect facilities from COVID19 spread, leaders knew one piece of the larger plan would be to ramp up capabilities for virtual visits. The same week Governor Greg Abbott issued the March 13 order to stop discretionary in-person visits to correctional facilities, TJJD officials purchased 25 new iPads for its family and volunteer coordinator offices. Those devices have been delivered, and another 18 devices have been ordered.
“Giving the kids more opportunities to reach out to their mentors and families is providing the youth peace of mind during this unprecedented time,” said Robin Motley, Community Relations Coordinator at Gainesville State School in North Texas. “Each youth is concerned about what is going on at home and whether or not their families are safe, and we can at least help them check in more often with loved ones.”
The iPads are being distributed proportionately to the agency’s halfway houses and five large secure campuses across the state, enabling staff to offer more online FaceTime and Google Duo sessions to all TJJD youth.
Caseworkers and family liaison and volunteer staff who regularly arrange both in-person and virtual visitation are setting new schedules to help assure that all TJJD youth are able to see and speak with relatives and even mentors via online tools.
At Evins Regional Juvenile Center in the Rio Grande Valley, Family Liaison Elva Benitez maintains an iPad that she uses to fulfill a steady stream of requests for virtual visits during normal circumstances. Her effort is currently being multiplied across the campus, with caseworkers supplied with an iPad for each dorm.
Benitez and Evins’ 13 case managers have committed to scheduling a FaceTime visit for each youth at least once every two weeks. Each session must be pre-arranged by phone with family members to assure their availability. In between virtual visits, youth also are able, as always, to speak with family members on dorm phones. In fact, while in-person visitation has been postponed, each youth has been given more opportunities to make those calls.
The setup is similar at Ron Jackson Correctional Complex in Brownwood where caseworkers, family and community relations staff are holding virtual visitation sessions for students to speak with relatives during time slots set for each weekday. Staff are additionally scheduling virtual chats three evenings each week for students to speak with their mentors.
“We are all in this battle against COVID19 together, staff, family and volunteers,” said Evins campus Community Relations Coordinator Fidel Garcia, who reported that all direct care staff are pitching in with activities as well to fill gaps created by the necessary temporary suspension of visitors, volunteer-led events and outings.
Teachers and education staff are part of the effort too, Garcia said. They’ve been playing board games, overseeing group exercises and supervising other in-house activities during an extended Spring Break at TJJD schools.
Meanwhile, TJJD mentors serving a variety of TJJD campuses are brainstorming creative ways to stay in touch with youth they’d otherwise see during on-site gatherings.
At Evins, the mentors have decided to go full bore old school and have begun writing letters to youth, Garcia said.
They’ll be dropping those in the mail, because, well, there’s actually not an app for that.
By Barbara Kessler, TJJD Communications
TJJD youth can find great meaning in books as they grow as individuals and reach for a better future. This past week, on Read Across America Day, we took the occasion to ask two staffers – English teacher Jill Fowler at Giddings and Librarian Henry Lewis at Ron Jackson – about some of the most popular titles making the rounds at their campus.
The number one read in our unscientific poll of two: The “Percy Jackson” fantasy adventure stories.
This will be no surprise to teachers, parents and young adult readers who’ve all likely heard of these immensely imaginative novels by San Antonio native Rick Riordan. The fantasies follow youthful modern heroes who find themselves amid Gods and serpents and monsters drawn from Greek mythology.
“Every single chapter of every book has a kid roughly their age escaping by the skin of his teeth,” said Fowler. “And there’s the fantasy aspect. I know that I, myself, read to get OUT of my reality. The boys are no different. Greek gods, Roman gods, magic, creatures from Hades: They are all in Rick Riordan’s work.”
While novels can be a great escape, they’re also a wonderful tool for bonding with others and finding common ground, which fits with TJJD's Texas Model goal of helping youth build strong relationships as they heal from past trauma.
Fowler explained: “One book leads to another, to an entire series, and boys literally sharing their private AND library books with others who see them reading on the dorm. In class, if I mention a book I like and why, a youth will usually share the title of book HE likes and why. That starts the sharing.”
Eventually, she says, this leads to books getting passed around and read so voraciously that their covers are barely hanging on.
“You can find paperback books that are taped back together just so another reading can happen before the book completely falls apart,” she said.
But that ragged book belies the joy it brought and the bonds it helped create among boys from different backgrounds.
Another prolific writer who enjoys popularity in TJJD schools is James Patterson, whose Alex Cross detective series offers the youth many mysteries with twists and turns that challenge them to consider the motivations of the fictional detective and the criminals he pursues.
Patterson “gets into the thoughts and the feelings of the characters,” Fowler said. “A lot of times before you know who the criminal is, you’ll know a lot about him. He gets inside their head.”
Patterson is popular at the Ron Jackson campus too where Lewis says he enjoys helping teen readers find books that speak to them and also books that draw them out of their comfort zone.
The urban teen romances by New Jersey writer Ni-Ni Simone and other similar young adult fiction are perennially popular, says Lewis, who manages the library at Lone Star High School West at Ron Jackson.
The girls really 
relate to Simone’s narratives and find characters within her books who have a similar lived experience, he says.
Another hugely popular read is “Dear Martin,” a young adult book by Nic Stone about a young African American man who writes rhetorical letters the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as he navigates new environments and faces racial profiling.
The author, Lewis says, is essentially asking, “What would Martin Luther King do?” and the students really relate to the social justice themes explored.
Lewis understands that reading levels among the youth vary greatly. TJJD research shows that many students arrive at TJJD behind their grade level, sometimes by several years. He aims to help those who need a boost by providing illustrated Manga books, which naturally provide clues to the text, or offering non-fiction works about careers and hobbies that are visually rich.
Mangas are hugely popular at TJJD, confirms Reading Education Specialist Mary Singer, who works with staff across all facilities to assure students get the help and encouragement they need with reading. That task is greatly helped by librarians across all campsues, who, like Lewis, keep an ear to the ground for books that appeal to the youth.
A social worker who spent 25 years in various roles at residential and outpatient treatment facilities, Lewis says he is always gratified when he can entice a student to read more or nudge even an avid reader to expand outside their favorite genre.
One of his signature methods is to offer the students book pairings.
When a student picks a fiction book to check out, he casts about for a “bonus” book to offer that complements the topic of the novel or mystery they’ve chosen. “I will connect them the books that are in some fashion connected 'in my Winnie the Pool brain’,” he says with a laugh.
For example, Lewis might find a book about careers with horses or dogs to accompany a novel, such as Black Beauty, that features an animal; or he might offer an Italian travel guide to a youth who’s checking out a mystery story set in Italy.
“One book to entice them and maybe another to take them out of their usual genre,” he says.
Like Fowler, Lewis also facilitates discussions about books and encourages the girls at Ron Jackson to write recommendations or reviews of the books they love. He posts these in the hallway, and says they are great conversation starters.
Lewis sees himself as the resident book Sherpa and tries to stay on top of new adult and teen literature so he can make recommendations that get the youth excited about reading.
He’s currently reviewing for possible inclusion “A Piece of Cake: A Memoir,” by Cupcake Brown, who writes about her struggles and triumphs as she rose from addiction and hustling on the streets to go to college, law school and become a practicing lawyer at a major firm.
“I think some of our girls can find hope in that.”