I think that during our workshop, we each spoke a fair amount of time and that while the participants are having fun, we were having fun helping them.  I think that as a team we were fine. I did not like being the  teacher for two hours because I felt like the spotlight was on me and if I got anything wrong I would mess up the whole thing. I think I would have been more relaxed because I felt very tense because it was my first time ever having to teach like that. I think that we should start working on the teach in a bit earlier than before. That way you have more time to get in visits. I also think that we should be assigned to groups rather than choosing because then we have a mix and we can get more work done.

In this visit we basically talked about things we could do to raise money and Carin was there to help us. This time we came up with some artistic ideas, like using photoshop during IWP. That would let us cath up on what we did not have time to do during our meetings.

We left school at 2:20 in order to take a train ride for an hour and reach the school by 3:30. We recorded ourselves walking to the school in the Bronx called P.S. 335. The neighborhood did not seem like the best neighborhood as compared to what the school looked like. The neighborhood had graffiti on buildings and many of the buildings looked very dirty. However on the premises of the school it was very clean. There was no graffiti or gum or anything like that. The inside of the building reminded me of my old school. It had the same look to it. We walked up to the fifth floor where we first interviewed the Art teacher that was in one of the videos on the Getting Tools to City Schools website. We asked questions like, “Did you see a difference in the way the children acted or their grades?” and the teacher along with the other three people we interviewed (the Assistant Principal, a student that received supplies, and the Parent Teacher Coordinator) gave the same response which was yes. “The children seemed more focused” said the art teacher. The PTC said, ” The children and the families were very grateful and the grades have improved as a result of receiving the supplies.” Along with those types of questions, we asked the bonus question which was, what is your favorite type of pizza? When we were on the train coming back to the school, we wrote letters saying thank you to the people we interviewed and signed them.

In this visit, we basically had a meeting with Dennis on how we could raise money and awareness so that more people could donate. We came up with the ideas such as putting a box in the lobby of the NYU Dorm where Ben lives. Since it is the end of the year, it would be more than likely that college students would have extra supplies. We also came up with a way to raise money in order to buy it from the organization’s supplier. We would make a competition or make a promise such as no Study Group for that day or such things like that.

Today I had my first visit, or rather our company’s first visit to us. We started out learning about Getting Tools to City Schools. We found out that it was a company that gives school supplies to schools in which 90% or more of the student body receives Title 1 Funding.. We also learned that they don’t just give to any school. They only give supplies to schools in which 90% of the children or more cannot afford to pay for hot lunch at school. From knowing that we can pretty much infer that those kids also can’t afford school supplies. LREI is very close with this company as well because the chairman and founder of this company was a former LREI parent. While Dennis Kitchen, the chairman/ former LREI parent came, we also did inventory. Basically we just counted up everything that we had in the box that was out front in the lobby. We had 2,088 pencils which was enough for about 451 binders. We also had many other things and we put them in a chart and we emailed it to Dennis. From came up with the plan that we might visit one of the schools that he donated to, and that we might also keep a goal and try to achieve that goal and present in Middle School meeting. Overall, this visit was fun and I hope that we can do more next time.