"There are times she doesn't want to come home, she just loves them so much".

 

 

 

           Paige Ragland

 

Paige Ragland may seem like an average seventeen year old, she is a senior at Maryville High School and enjoys rugby, snow skiing, and traveling with her family. Yet unlike most kids her age, Paige is also a committed volunteer. Paige has been a steady volunteer at the Wesley House for the past three years. She tries to come at least twice a week; Paige knows the kids personally and they know her. She helps the kids with their homework, reads with them, and takes time to get to know them. Her favorite aspect is just sitting down and talking with the kids. “Sometimes all a child needs is someone to listen to them, which they don’t always get at home,” she says. “Sometimes you don’t really feel like you’re doing much of a community service, but to those kids it really does mean the world.”

 

Paige may only be a teenager, but she has wisdom well beyond her years. She finds it disheartening how kids her age often volunteer because they have to or are required to do so by their schools. At Maryville High School all seniors are required to give 15 hours of community service for the year. Paige has surpassed that requirement by far, but has continued to volunteer at Wesley House. She thinks it’s a great thing when people her age come to the Wesley House. “Its easier for kids to talk to someone their age sometimes…they feel as if they are being talked to instead of talked down to….”

 

This year Paige is graduating from high school.  She will be going to the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs where she will fulfill her dream of flying fighter planes. She realizes this is her last steady year as a volunteer at Wesley House.  She will never forget what an impact the Wesley House had on her. “The friendships I’ve made with some of the kids and how it has affected not only them but also me is something I will never forget,” she says.

         April Lamb

I was working to put together a show about academics in Knox County and we wanted a success story, that's when someone mentioned Wesley House.  That day I met with Kari and spoke to her about the amazing leaps academically kids made in the Wesley House afterschool program.  After I met with Kari I went to a school and talked to teachers who remarked not only on the success of the Wesley House kids, but how you knew a Wesley House child by the way they acted.  They were students who behaved and showed respect for teachers, other students, and themselves.

At the end of the day I decided that I wanted to be a part of Wesley House.  I called and asked to volunteer and Sharon made it so easy.  The kids made it rewarding.  I was nervous on my first day, it had been a long time since I had worked with children, but after a few minutes I realized they accepted everyone.  A couple of months into my volunteer work the children were engrossed in a reading contest.  The kids would line up for the chance to read to me (they really wanted to win the contest).  One child was reading and then he stopped and looked up at me, "Miss April, did you always know you were going to be a teacher?"  I just laughed and said "I'm not a teacher."  He laughed too and said, "Yes, you are." I was known to most people as a reporter, and I saw myself as a reporter first, but through his eyes I was a teacher.  I realized then that I wasn't bound by what I had been.  I loved reporting at channel 10, but it didn't take many afternoons at Wesley House to find that my passion had shifted from the news to young minds.  This fall I enrolled in an education program at Lincoln Memorial University and I am now working for a non-profit that benefits children from Virginia, through Tennessee and into Georgia.