All in all it was a relief to get our classes over with and it felt great.  It was also nice to see all our hard-work pay off.  During our workshop I think the two things that were the best was the visual (Powerpoint with Interviews) and the activity itself.  Every kid seemed into decorating pencils and some didn’t want to stop and asked if they could decorate more after school.  I underestimated how  hard it is to teach a class.  We got a brief introduction to teaching this year with our science project on the human body, but it is more challenging teaching younger kids.  In the first workshop the kids were great, the second group were difficult to control.  Teaching the material wasn’t hard for me.  We worked well as a team and we would just try and tell the kids to please be quiet.  I think we would have a different conclusion to the workshop and maybe give them more factual information.  I think the one thing I would take away from this experience is that never give up hope and make the best of what you have.  What went well for my set up group was making posters and placing all around the school, educating people about the day.  I thought the assemblies were great, the only issue I have is that the morning one may have gone on too long.  Everything leading up to the teach in was stressful.  I think next year you guys should give the kids a little more time to make the class instead of 15 days.  I also think that there shouldn’t be groups with more than 4 people teaching it.  I enjoyed the experience.

Our visit with Dennis in the library today was very brief.  At 3:45 I headed into the library only to see Ivo, Carin, and Dennis.  It looked like Ivo was showing Dennis his PSA which looks very well done.  Once we were done with some small talk Dennis asked Ivo and I to print out our social justice paper.  He read them over giving us some constructive criticism.  We then realized that Miral, Chase, and Bryce were not at the library.  Me and Ivo went on a wild  goose chase to locate our missing members.  We weren’t very successful in locating our group.  I only found Bryce.  I asked him to print out his paper and he did.  After he went back to the science lab to finish robotics.  We then talked about things to add that will improve our papers.  After that we talked about some more fundraising activities and the poster we were going to construct.  All in all it was a very short meeting and Dennis really helped us with our papers.

This wednesday I met Dennis and Carin in the art studio.  Ivo was up there working on yearbook.  We all said hello and talked about our spring breaks.  I noticed that not to many people were at the meeting spot.  Ivo and Bryce and Chase had some extra curricular commitments and Miral and Ben had other important plans.  So today it would be just Dennis and I.  We decided to create the poster to display all the materials we have collected and or goal, which is 22 full binders.  Since we were up in the art room we used common sense and got all the things we need to create this master piece.  Ivo helped us with this before he had to go.  We got two big pieces of oak tag and taped them together.  We then collected a sharpie, meter stick, and some pencils.  We went downstairs to Mommi’s room to use as our construction site.  First we looked at the model on Dennis iphone.  We had to divide that paper up so it would be is 7 equal columns. We separated it out and then sketched in the lines.  We then wrote in the categories and numbers.  I went over them with sharpie and then Chase came into help.  We went back up to the art room to get 6 different colors of construction paper.  We ran back down stairs to cut the paper into about 3.5 inch strips.  Once we got that out of the way we cut them again to the right amount of whatever material it was for.  I left at 4:15 and Bryce came in to put the finishing touches on the poster.  I look forward to seeing it in the school soon.  Hopefully more people will show up next time.

This past Wednesday Miral, Chase, Ivo, Bryce, Ben, and I met Dennis in the lobby at around 2:20 to travel to P.S 335 in the south Bronx.  I had brought my Flip camera to videotape our interviews with some teachers and students.  We left school only to walk to West 4^th street to catch the A train.  We got of at 42^nd street and then transferred to the number 2 train (which was a extremely long walk).  There was a brief part of the train ride were it went outside.  It was a very good view of the neighborhood.  When we got out at Intervale Avenue, we walked down the many flights of stairs onto a main the Avenue.  The school was a couple of blocks away so we got some footage of us walking at what the community was like.  It looked like any other neighborhood and so did the people.  I had already had some ideas of what the school would look like.  I thought it would be a little less up to date and maybe less materials and more bland.  These thoughts all were corrected when we walked in though.  The school looked like my old elementary school and I heard a after school class were the children were laughing and looked happy.  As we met the assistant principal in the lobby we introduced ourselves and then preceded up the stairs to get to the art room were we would talk to Ms. Henry the art teacher.  We interviewed her with the questions we came up with the week before.  She couldn’t answer all of them but when she answered the ones she could she gave us a lot of good information.  She had an art class to teach so she let us interview one of the kids in her class that received the school supplies form the previous year.  She was very shy yet very informative.  We then went to interview the parent coordinator.  Walking through the halls I noticed that the children were staring at us, I don’t know if it was because we looked different or we were bigger kids.  They school was very vibrant, for example the walls were painted green and it felt welcoming.  They teachers put up some of the work that the children had done in class and it was very good for 4^th and 5^th graders.  I even saw some signs saying please donate and help Haiti, which I thought was very cool.  I think this was the most important interview because the parent coordinator really gets to talk to the families and understand what they are going through.  We learned a lot from her, such as most of the children that attend this school are Latin and more Spanish speaking countries.  Some parents are here illegally so they feel they can’t come inside the school and be in touch with the teachers and what the children are learning.  Some kids live in shelters, some live with their grandparents, uncles, and aunts.  She was very informative.  We then moved on to interview the assistant principal.  We asked some of the same questions to her and I feel got some of the same types of answers but again she was informative and we got everything we wanted to know.  We said goodbye and thanked everyone.  On the train home we wrote thank you letters to our three interviewees.  The trip was very helpful and I enjoyed it.  I think it will give us a lot of information for our teach-in and our papers.

Today Miral, Ben, Ivo, Chase, Bryce and I met Dennis Kitchen in the library to discuss different was to fundraise for the organization.  Dennis brought along a surprise guest which was none other than our very own Carin Cohen.  She is very well known for her famous chocolate that she sells at bake sales.  The theme of the meeting was fundraising.  The one supply that the organization needs the most is binders.  Sadly binders are the most expensive and we thought of a couple of ways to get some money to purchase these items.  We first thought of the obvious, which is to hold a bake sale in front of the school.  We wanted to do something different.  Everyone really was orbiting around the idea of doing something like a “Pennies for Peace” drive.  So we came up with the idea “Bucks for Binders”.  This is going to be a competition, every homeroom for themselves.  Every child in each class can bring in a few dollars and the homeroom that raises the most money will win a prize.  The prize we still have to figure out, we would like it to be that the winners get no homework for that weekend.  We all loved this idea including Dennis.  We figure if every child brings in 10 dollars we can get up to 800 dollars and that will be more than enough to reach our goal for binders.  Miral and Carin also felt like we should do a bake sale.  Miral offered to make Rice-Crispy treats and knit and sell some scarfs which I think is great.  Carin will make chocolate bars with the wrapper showing the Tools for City Schools logo and some information about the organization.  We believe that we can make a good profit from all of these ideas.  Dennis suggested that we should maybe record some of our meetings and make it into a iMovie.  We can educate people about what we do and the organizations message.  We can also use it in our teach-in.  Ben and Bryce volunteered to video type.  Ivo also volunteered to make some signs and posters to put up around the school.  I look forward to next weeks visit and check out Dennis’s website.  http://www.gettingtoolstocityschools.org/home

This afternoon Ben, Ivo, Miral, Bryce and I met Dennis Kitchen, the director of Getting Tools for City Schools.  It was our first visit with Dennis.  We met him at the library around 4 o’clock.  He wanted to give us a brief overview of the organization and explained what there mission was.  We learned some interesting facts.  He gets a list of schools that are economically depressed in the city.  The requirement is over 90% of the kids have to be in the “Title 1” program.  This program was put in place to help schools with high numbers or high percentages of poor children to help ensure that all children meet challenging state academic standards.  Tools for City Schools tries to get a 3-ring Binders, paper, pencils and pens, pocket dividers and a pencil cases to students who are in this program.  He then showed us some eye-opening photos of schools that need help and we heard a 7th grade math teacher in Bedford-Stuyvesant talking about the school she teaches in and how Tools for City Schools helps kids stay off the streets and in school.  We then talked about how we can help get “tools” and fundraise.  Many people had creative ideas.  Ben stated that he lived in a NYU dormitory and could place a box in his lobby to collect unused supplies from the collage students.  Ivo came up with the idea of making a goal chart to get about 270 full binders by the end of this year.   After this overview we showed Dennis the box of school supplies we collected at the Middle School Dance.  It was filled to the top.  We decided to get a inventory check to see how much we had actually collected.  For now we are storing the supplies in Sarah’s Room.  The hardest part of the day was trying to bring the box upstairs, it took us about 10 minutes.  Once we started to unpack we had noticed that there were a lot more supplies than we thought there were.  We collected enough pencils to fill the 270 binders but we are short in every other category.  Our homework from now until next time we meet Dennis is to make a goal chart and advertise somehow that we need supplies.  It would be great if every kid brought in 2 three ring binders.