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November 29: Giany Guedjo

Just after Thanksgiving break on November 29, we were introduced to Giany Guedjo, our guest speaker for Open Forum. He is currently the executive director at Carolina Human Reinvestment, a non-profit organization that specializes in promoting healthy lifestyles for kids in Georgetown County. He is also a talented linguist and speaks over 10 different languages. When he was a recent immigrant to the US, he learned to speak English in one year and three months at his first job over here, making sandwiches at Subway.

Giany was born in Bénin, a French-speaking country in West Africa between Ghana and Nigeria. Before emigrating from Bénin to the United States with his wife, Giany overcame very difficult conditions to get an education in Africa. For example, at his university in Bénin there were 2500 students in some classes. “Students broke windows to get in and get a good seat,” he said. “There were only 100 books for all those students.” After graduating as valedictorian, he worked at an orphanage and taught farmers how to market crops. Fourteen years ago, his wife won the US Immigration Lottery and they decided to move here.

Life is not easy for immigrants and Giany and his wife were no exception. The job at Subway allowed them to survive until Giany could get enough English to go back to school. He then got a Masters of Business Administration from Webster University. Even then, it wasn’t easy to find work. Giany learned of the job at CHR almost by accident but it is a great fit for him and he is now the proud executive director of this community nonprofit in both Georgetown and Pawleys Island.

One of CHR’s projects is community gardening. There are gardens in Georgetown, Pawleys Island, and at several area schools. People from the community and students can take home fresh produce and eat healthier, better-tasting food.  “Food is medicine,” said Giany. CHR also sponsors comprehensive after-school programs where elementary students can do their homework and practice their reading. Giany invited us to come read with kids as community service. CHR also has helped older kids find after-school and summer jobs in the community and managed the FoodShare program to help food-insecure families.

Giany told us that you should have fun in life, but you should get your work done first. He has a particular philosophy to conquering life, which is “when you do something, do it the hard way.” This is accompanied by a list of four rules: sleep hard, eat hard, play hard, and most importantly work hard. We would like to thank Giany for being our guest speaker for Wednesday and giving us the opportunity to do more community service with the CHR.

By Larson

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September 20, 2023: Richard Nesbit

On September 20, 2023, we welcomed Richard Nesbit as our speaker. Richard is involved in the Carolina Human Reinvestment Project of Pawleys Island, where he spends a lot of time working in their Community Garden.  Richard also runs a small non-profit organization that helps kids in Africa who cannot afford to attend school. He shared video footage of some of his trips to Africa to see the students and schools he helps sponsor.  His efforts are focused on Uganda, where education is very expensive.

Richard told us about how he started his non-profit. Several years ago, he heard from a Ugandan student named John who reached out to him on Facebook Messenger. John told him about the war going on in his village. Things were so bad, John had no hope of continuing his education. Richard decided to set up a GoFundMe and raised 1000 dollars for John’s secondary education. John got his diploma and ended up going to university!

Richard shared his photos and videos of Uganda. We saw a beautiful countryside with small villages where Ugandans farm and try to make extra money the best they can. The children are very well dressed when they go to school because they respect the institution. Richard told us that they love school and even hang out there on Saturdays to see their friends.

Richard’s non-profit has now helped about 24 students. He never expected to be helping kids in Africa who cannot afford school but that is the way his life turned out. Richard’s talk was a remainder that we have no idea what life has in store for us or what may be asked of us one day. Thank you, Richard, for coming and speaking to us.

By Gracin

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September 19, 2023: Victoria Smalls

On Tuesday, September 19, the Georgetown County Library Friends welcomed speaker Victoria Smalls, who works as the executive director of the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor Commission. Victoria spoke to a crowd of about 50 people in the Auditorium, including many TGS students, introducing us to Gullah Geechee culture.

The Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor covers those areas on the east coast of the US where rice was grown. It stretches from St. Augustine to southern North Carolina. People from tribes in western Africa were enslaved and brought over starting in the 16th century to work in the colonies where the colonists began to exploit their knowledge of rice-growing, which included skills in engineering and hydrology—especially their knowledge of canal-building and how to use rice trunks to control the flow of water.

The Gullah Geechee people have preserved much of their African heritage: basket weaving, boat building, cooking, spirituality, and their unique African creole language. Gullah Geechee developed as enslaved people from scores of different African tribes with different languages had to communicate with each other and with those who enslaved them. Victoria shared artwork from several Gullah Geechee artists, such as Jonathan Green and Natalie Daise, who have re-imagined the joy, beauty, and dignity of Gullah Geechee culture even in the face of its horrific challenges.

Victoria talked about her own family, who owned land in St. Helena after the Civil War. She was excited because she recently found an 1859 receipt from the Freedmen’s Bank in Beaufort with the names of her great-grandparents on it. She read to us in Gullah and left us with a proverb which she applies to her own life and her work of finding out more about the culture she came from: “If you don’t know where you came from, you don’t know where you are going.”

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August 30, 2023: Dan Cross Turner

Our first speaker of this school year was Dr. Dan Turner, Head of Programming and Outreach at the Georgetown County Library. Dr. Turner has been working at the Georgetown Library for five years now, and has put together many different programs for the library. The library is currently closed for renovations, so he and his colleague Trudy Bazemore have been using the Es’Dorn Room at our school for their office. “It’s the nicest place we’ve ever worked!” he laughed.

Before working at the library, Dr. Turner taught literature and writing for 20 years at USC, Vanderbilt, Siena College, and Coastal Carolina. Turner was born “up north” in Spartanburg, and has a lifelong love for reading and writing which he enjoys sharing with others. One of his favorite writers is William Shakespeare but his area of concentration is American Southern Gothic literature. He urged the students who love writing to keep writing every day and not put up obstacles. “You’ve got to get it going to keep it going,” he said. “You don’t want to stand in your own way.”

The library renovations are a massive project, made possible by a bequest from Mrs. Jean Flournoy Moody, who left $1,000,000 to support the library upon her death. A team that included Dr. Turner first had to remove 80,000 books and place them into storage before the construction workers even arrived. “Our library was in need of some love,” Dr. Turner told us.

Besides adding much needed space to the library, the renovations to the library will transform the public space into something much more than a place to quietly do homework and read books, but will feature a filmmaking space with video editing software and production equipment. None of this would have been possible without the diligent work of the library’s dedicated staff members. Dr. Turner invited us to volunteer to help reshelve those 80,000 volumes when the library reopens in the spring! Our relationship with the Georgetown Library benefits our students in countless ways, and we would like to thank Dr. Dan Turner for being our first guest speaker of the school year!

By Larson

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April 26, 2023: Rich Shenone

On April 26th, our speaker was Rich Schenone from Georgetown Drug and Alcohol Abuse Commission. He had a very frank and personal conversation with the students here at TGS. He began his talk by sharing his own struggle with drug and alcohol use.

In college, Rich was an alcoholic. He had to go to AA and counseling, which helped him get past that difficult time in his life.  Rich had a good job as a middle school teacher in New Jersey for many years. Unfortunately, his struggle with addiction wasn’t over. Rich was in a car accident and broke his vertebrae. He was prescribed pain pills and became addicted after being on them for only three days.

Rich and his family moved down to Myrtle Beach from New Jersey soon after his accident because one of his children has rheumatoid arthritis, and they thought the warmer climate would help and he wanted a fresh start. However, things went downhill for him in South Carolina.

“You wanna know what’s cheaper than pills?” Rich said. “Heroin. So, I became hooked on heroin. I could get the same effect from pills for cheaper.” 

“I thought I’d move down here and do some fishing and crabbing, but instead I ended up homeless on the streets of Myrtle Beach,” Rich told us. After an arrest and a chance meeting with a former student, Rich was ashamed and finally had the motivation to get his life back together and go to rehab. After that, he became a Peer Recovery Counselor in Charleston. Rich would help doctors figure out which drug an overdose victim had taken, and help patients recover. From there, he moved back to the Myrtle Beach area and now works for Georgetown Drug and Alcohol Abuse Commission. Rich does many public speaking events.

Rich recently did a talk at the courthouse illustrating the difference between his life during his addiction and his life today.  He appeared in his former homeless clothes and shoes, left the stage, then returned dressed and cleaned up, highlighting the extreme change sobriety has brought to his life.

“The worst drug is the first drug you ever take,” he told us. We all would like to thank Rich for coming and sharing his story with us. 

By Emily

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March 22, 2023: Grayson Sossamon

Grayson Sossamon was our speaker today. He holds the special place of being the first student ever to sign up for our school, having started as a seventh grader in 2013! Grayson is attending Coastal Carolina University and majoring in Exercise and Sports Science. He is currently looking at graduate schools and pursuing an eventual degree in Physical Therapy.

Grayson works with a research professor in his CCU department studying the use of Blood Flow Restriction in exercise. Their work together gave him the unique opportunity to present at a scientific conference in Greenville recently. He showed us the poster of their experimental study. “It’s the exact same as a science fair project,” he said. “So whatever Dr. Neubauer is teaching you is for real!”

Grayson explained that restricting blood flow to certain groups of muscles can intensify exercise without making it hard on the heart. “The body is kind of tricking itself,” he told us. BFR is used for people who have cardiovascular problems–patients with heart disease can lift less weight and still get all the benefits of weight-lifting without straining themselves. The trick is finding the sweet spot where gains are maximal and risk to the patient is minimal.

Grayson told us that BFR is already being used successfully in many PT gyms but that people should only use it under the guidance of a professional.

Grayson started out as a test subject for the BFR research and found it fascinating and helpful to his own fitness. He then jumped at the chance to work with a professor involved in the research who needed an assistant. He ended up deciding to become a physical therapist! Grayson will graduate this May. We are very proud of him and it was delightful to see him back on campus.

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February 1, 2023: Hope McFaddin

“I’ve always loved the water and felt a real kinship with it,” said Hope McFaddin, our Open Forum speaker for February 1, 2023. Hope has been the head administrator for the SC Maritime Museum since 2018.

Hope told us that as a teenager, she felt depressed and decided to begin volunteering at the SCMM to get herself out and find some happiness. It worked, and she was eventually hired part-time, then full-time and now is very fulfilled by all the responsibilities of her job—writing grants, managing volunteers, running the many educational programs, helping create exhibits, and just keeping the building well-maintained.

The SCMM is an incredible asset to tourism in Georgetown. It is free and there are about 20,000 annual visitors from all over the US and many other countries. The umbrella organization for the SCMM is the Harbor Historical Society, which organizes the annual Wooden Boat Show and the summer Youth Sailing Program. Since 2017, they have had programs for youth every month upstairs and are hoping to start a hands-on learning area there. They are always looking to increase student traffic to the SCMM.

Hope told us that our involvement in the SCMM was “impactful and makes a huge difference,” and thanked us for it. The SCMM has made a huge difference for TGS as well, giving us amazing volunteer opportunities, sponsoring our sailing team, and always supporting our school events. One of our seniors, Kelsi, has been volunteering at the SCMM since 2020 and has learned a lot. Thank you for coming to talk to us, Hope!

By Quin

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January 18, 2023: Kris Brame

Today, TGS said, “Bonjour!” to Kris Brame, Mme Gates’ former French student who also had Mrs. Patrick, Dr. Gates, and Dr. Neubauer as his high school teachers. Fluent in French and German, he now works as a translator today after starting his own company By The Word Translation. He talked to us about his love for learning languages and his international educational path.

Kris originally wanted to learn German, inspired by an Austrian exchange student his family hosted when he was in 8th grade. He told us “Everyone was always asking Fabian ‘How do you say that in German?’ and I learned the words.” He took French in high school, then decided to go on a German high school exchange program before graduating. While there, he began to perfect his German and French.

After earning the German equivalent of a high school diploma, Kris decided to stay in Europe to pursue translation studies at the university level in Mainz. He finished his B.S. at Kent State, then interned as a medical interpreter in Indianapolis.  COVID put an end to in-person medical interpretation and at that point, Kris took the big step of starting his own company.

By the Word Translation is Kris’s online enterprise. He is still a medical interpreter, but now mostly does subtitle translations for many clients, most notably Netflix and a French poker show. Unfortunately, Kris couldn’t give any spoilers for our favorite shows! He had some advice for students who wish seriously to master their foreign language: find a good friend who is a native speaker to talk to and use the internet to read and listen to the language you want to learn. Vielen Dank, Kris! 

By Emily

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January 4, 2023: Steve Harms

On Wednesday, January 4, our guest was Steve Harms of Purr & Pour Cat Café (who also brought along a feline friend named Houdini). Originally from Boston, Steve graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and made his career in the chemical industry. After retiring, all of that changed. He laughed, “You can graduate from MIT and end up scooping poop.”

The Purr & Pour Cat Café on Front Street is home to about 15 cats at all times. Steve and his wife Patricia founded the business and have been operating it since 2019. Steve thanked us for our support of Purr & Pour (we keep their window decorated for the holidays) and explained why he and Patricia decided to open a cat café in the first place.

Purr & Pour supports St. Frances Animal Center and was inspired by a kitty (Mr. Biscuits) who spent two sad years in a shelter before Steve and Patricia adopted him. “Our mission is to get the cats adopted,” Steve said. The café works closely with St. Frances Animal Center to host cats in their cafe, where hopefully the cats will be adopted by customers. Purr & Pour has already placed over 300 cats! Surplus income is donated to St. Frances.

Besides placing cats in homes, the Cat Café is organizing a series of educational meetings about animal welfare issues in Georgetown.

The series begins this week: on January 11th and January 18th Purr & Pour will be holding an event from 4:30pm to 6:00pm. The event is called So You Want to be a Veterinerian. It will be presented by Dr. Katie Roe-Jarisch, DMV of Fidelis Animal Hospital. Dr. Katie will be presenting about her journey to be a vet and answering questions about what it takes to be a vet.

by Sage

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November 16, 2022: Kim Parsons

The Georgetown School has been friends with the Family Justice Center for a long time. Every year before our annual Oyster Roast, Kingfishers help set up for Taste of Georgetown, the Family Justice Center’ s main fundraiser.  

Kim Parsons, executive director of the FJC, stopped by at Open Forum to tell us about how important the work they do is. FJC is a non-profit founded in 2006 that was created to address the alarming amount of domestic violence occurring in our area. Horry County is number one in the state for violence against women and Georgetown County has similar statistics. FJC has given victims of domestic violence in Georgetown a place to go where they know they can receive the help they need. 

Kim told us that FJC offers multiple services to help victims, such as counseling, court advocacy, and orders of protection. Despite the resources that organizations like this can provide, only about 20% of victims of abuse seek help, she said. It can be difficult to leave an abusive partner and to seek help, not only emotionally but also physically.

“Phones can be used to track people,” Kim told us. Tracking leaves victims at the mercy of their abuser, unable to seek help without their abuser knowing. We all need to realize how bad actors can use information from our phones.

“Red flags in relationships can be difficult to spot at first,” Kim also said. In the beginning, behavior that may seem doting or loving can quickly turn obsessive or harmful. She warned us against partners who call or text obsessively, engage in name-calling, dictate what to wear, refuse to allow contact with family and friends, make threats against you or themselves, or act violently.

At the end of her talk, Kim gave all of the students who had volunteered for Taste of Georgetown a t-shirt to thank them for their help.

By Isaac