When you walk into the Church at Woodbine on a Tuesday night in May, you may open the door for a little girl smiling up at you, talking happily with her mother in Arabic. A step into the echoey church hallway and you’ll be greeted by more voices and a nervous excitement as people move in and out of rooms, chatting and holding clamshells full of food. The people in this building have come to take their final exams of the semester, and for a handful, a cap-and-gown graduation ceremony is right around the corner. As the adult learners shuffle into their classes, children run down the hallway together, excited by the promise of a craft night.
Begin Anew has been a fixture of the community for over 20 years, with a mission to empower individuals to overcome the obstacles caused by poverty through education, mentoring, and resources. They offer cost-free courses for adults who are learning English, pursuing their high school equivalency diploma, or seeking computer and job skills. Significantly, their campuses across Middle Tennessee — in Franklin, Madison, Woodbine and downtown Nashville — are tailored to the specific needs of the communities they are embedded in.
“When we assessed the Woodbine community, the greatest need was English language learning, so that’s by far the majority of our students at Woodbine,” explains Teresa Watts, who serves as Begin Anew’s program director. “But at the downtown campus, English is not the barrier — that population is trying to get their education and get a job. So we adapt to what the community needs.”
Their courses, which are entirely volunteer-taught, offer needs-based curriculums too: all incoming students take assessment exams that determine where their learning journeys should begin. In the high school equivalency (HSE) program, that assessment is called the GAIN, or general assessment of instructional needs. Based on how students score on the GAIN, they are placed into a corresponding grade-level curriculum. Some students aren’t ready to move into the standard HSE curriculum right away, and that’s okay — Begin Anew staff and volunteers work closely with students to provide the additional preparation they need.
Check out a video about a graduate of this program.
Similarly, the Woodbine campus, located off of Nolensville Road, sees a number of students whose native languages don’t share an alphabet with English. Begin Anew’s tiered ELL curriculum didn’t originally accommodate learners with virtually no English knowledge, but to meet this need, they plan to offer a basic class that offers prerequisites for ELL I, including letters, numbers, and simple words this fall.
At most campuses, courses are offered in the evenings to accommodate work schedules. However, at the Franklin campus, Begin Anew offers daytime classes to accommodate the needs of the adult learners who live there. In other words: Begin Anew is exceptionally good at meeting people where they’re at. “We’re always trying to eliminate barriers for our students,” explains Teresa.
Begin Anew is committed to staying with students for the long haul. Completing the coursework for each of these tracks — be it receiving a diploma or mastering a language — can sometimes take years, and Begin Anew is prepared to support families through that journey. For that reason, when students enter the program, they take a self-sufficiency exam measuring everything from whether or not they have basic identification to how they rank in food and housing security. Based on that assessment, Begin Anew can support families with personalized resources, sometimes connecting them with other organizations. While Begin Anew offers bus passes, meals, and childcare to all families during class time, they know that to meet the multi-faceted needs of their students, it takes a community.
“We want to do what we do well, and then we want to link arms with people like The Nashville Food Project who do what you do well so that we can give students the best opportunity for long-term success.”
Since 2019, Begin Anew’s Woodbine campus has received about 50 meals each week, meaning that they are able to offer food to their students during Monday and Thursday class times. They also receive weekly meals at the downtown campus, which has been a food access partner since 2015.
Most importantly, though, Begin Anew is committed to meeting a need for community among their students. Because their coursework tracks are geared toward long-term learning, many of these students are learning in the same small groups for months or even years at a time. An hour each week, Begin Anew hosts optional community groups, focused solely on addressing social and spiritual needs. Their faith-based teachings, Teresa explains, are aimed at helping students understand their value, and the groups provide a unique setting for people to share about their personal lives, opening the door for folks to receive more personalized support.
“They need each other, and we all have so much to learn from each other,” says Teresa.
Begin Anew’s ceremony for spring 2024 graduates will take place on Saturday morning, June 8, at Woodmont Baptist Church. Learn more about their work or volunteer as an instructor.