1.  In the Gender Bender group a lot of things went well for us.  One thing that well was that everyone always seemed to be occupied with something to do whether it was watching/commenting on a skit, performing a skit, watching a commercial, or having a discussion.  Another thing that went great for us was that everybody had something to say about the commercial and everyone understood what we were trying to teach them.  The last thing that went well for us was that everybody enjoyed having a conversation about the topic with their peers.  They didn’t feel shy except for one group of fifth graders.

2.  I think that being a “teacher” for two hours is pretty cool.  I felt like I was in command and everybody was always listening to me.  If I asked someone to stop doing something they would stop.  But it wasn’t exactly easy because you never want to have an awkward silence so I had to always be prepared to ask a new question or have a new comment that they could talk about.  Also it was challenging because I always needed to be ready to answer questions and i didn’t want to tell them that i didn’t know the answer.  I guess that it was a very good simulation of being a “teacher”, but there were some points where Sherezada or Frank had to step in and say something to the kids, which did help us in retrospect.

3.  If i could do something to change our workshop i would have mixed up the groups a little better.  When two kids were together that didn’t want to perform we had to perform for them and when two best friends were together they wouldn’t work, they would just pretend like they were shooting each other with made up weapons and pretending to drink a lot of beer.  Another thing that i would do is have some more questions for the participants because you never want awkward silences, which happened a couple of times but only for 5 seconds.

4.  I leave with an understanding of how to help for a certain cause.  I got to go to an organization and raise money for them by myself and it makes me feel very accomplished.  I now realize how non-profit organizations work and how I can get people to help or help myself.  It has been a great experience.

5.  My set-up groups were in the beginning a little out of control because too many people were in the music group.  We had to split up into two different groups, one group having already been a band for six months.  So after a while some people from my band went to the other band because they new the song they were playing and i got screwed along with Julian and Will.  But in the end Lenny offered Will Julian, and I to do a new song with him and Julian and I accepted, but for some reason Will said that he didn’t want to come in and play with us.  So i would say that it went well.

6.  I definitely had a rough time getting to the teach-inn with my group.  One of my group members did his fair share of work and the other one left all of his share of work for me to do.  So in retrospect i had to do double the work that i should have.  But i got it done and it was a very successful teach-inn.  I think for next year you (the teachers) shouldn’t let the students be so free.  You should really give three positions to each group and they decide which one each of them gets themselves.  Because if one person doesn’t pull their weight no one feels like they should step in and pull it themselves, the person who didn’t pull it just gets screwed.

7.  I think that the very end of the teach-inn where everybody talks about their organization should be a little more organized and planned earlier with a script because people were winging it and it didn’t look great.

For our last visit with the girls club we didn’t do that much.  I am not saying that we didn’t do anything important though.  We sat down with Jenny and she started to talk to us about the walk-athon.  She really liked the fact that we already raised 500 dollars, but she wanted us to raise 500 more and get 7 more people to join our team.  I was thinking that it was going to be easy to do that because our friends will want to go to the (parade like) walk-athon.  Each team will be paired with a Girls Club member “co-captain.” Teams will compete for prizes in several categories including: most members, most funds raised, most creative, and most spirited. There is no fee to register a team.  So it i obviously important for us to get a lot of members.

This is how you sign up for our team in the walk-athon (the Knights).  You go to girlsclub.org and you click walk-athon for health may 15.  Than you click the big red button that says register.  Than on the right you will see a couple of pink links, the one that says register you want to click on.  You fill in the bubble i need to create an account and press next.  You than fill out all of the information it asks you (it is a trustworthy organization so they wont exploit your info).  From there you pick the team you want to join and preferably make some donations or campaign for our team.  If you want to donate and not join our team, which is still very nice, you basically do the same thing but instead of filling out your info, you fill out your credit card info and pick a person on the team to donate to.  We are excited to see everybody that shows for the walk-athon and our work pay off.

Noel and I went to the Girls Club the Wednesday before Spring Break.  We got there and Jenny was talking to couple of the mothers of some young girls that were just joining the Club.  She was talking to them about a dancing program that they could do or a singing program.  One of the girls asked if they could play basketball but the Girls Club don’t have those kind of facilities yet, but i am sure it is something that they will have in the near future.  We waited on the couch while we were waiting for Harry to get there and for her to finish her conversation with the mothers and we started to realized how comfortable we felt in the Girls Club because they are so warm and welcoming.

When Jenny was ready and Harry got there we all sat down and started discussing our team.  She was telling us how we can create accounts and how we can get people to donate to a certain person or how they can join our team.  She was wondering who would join the team or who would sponsor the team and we said that we could try to get people from the school to join the team and we would focus the donating more towards family and family friends.  She brought in one of the people who work on the website to teach us how to do all of the technical stuff on the website and even she was welcoming to us.  After she was done telling us how we can work the website Jenny started to talk to us about our last visit.  She said that we could get on the computers and send emails to people that inform them about the walk-athon.  I am excited and can’t wait to finish off our job at the Girls Club.

Today Noel, Harry, and I went to the Lower East Side Girls Club for the third time.  Jenny (the head of the organization) wasn’t there in the beginning but Luna (one of the main workers) was.  She was with a couple of girls that were part of the organization and a director / film maker named Santa.  While the plate of cookies went around the room Santa started to explain what her job entitled her to do and what she was going to do with the girls today.  She was teaching the girls how to make a public service announcement, unlike us though they were going to use video cameras.  We watched the Girls make a draft of there video on paper.  While we were watching them we realized that we knew one of them that was in the seventh grade from Friends.  We talked to her for a couple of minutes and than Jenny came.  She brought us upstairs and we started to talk about the walk-a-thon.

Jenny started talking about the team we started on the Girls Club sight (http://www.girlsclub.org/).  Our team name is the LREI Knights and I am the team captain.  Unfortunately we only have three members right now, Noel, Harry, and I.  Jenny told us that we should hand out the flyers in our school and try to get more people to join.  After Jenny spoke for a while we started to tell her about our public service announcements and our Social Justice Teach-Inn.  After we talked for around twenty minutes we said goodbye to the girls and left.  We are looking for our next visit on Wednesday the seventeenth.

Today we went to the Lower East Side Girls club for the second time and this time we were actually put to work.  Last time we met everybody and started to understand what their organization was about, but now we were officially starting.  We got there at three thirty right after school and Jenny (the head of the organization) wasn’t there yet but one of the adult workers Luna was.  Luna was working on wrapping chocolate bars, another way they receive money for their non-profit organization.  There were two kinds of chocolate, bitter sweet and milk chocolate.  What they do is like what Carin does, but Carin makes the chocolate while the Lower East Side Girls Club just buys fare trade chocolate.  My first job was to take the wrapping paper and fold it so that the chocolate could slip into it.  After i folded all of the paper i started to glue (to pre-wraped in tinfoil) chocolate in to the wrapping with Harry and Noel.  While i was doing that Jenny arrived and started to speak to us about helping with the second annual Lower East Side Girls Club Walkathon.  She talked to us about recruiting people from our school to walk with them or sponsor people from our school including me in the five kilometer walk.  After we spoke about that Jenny left us alone for a little bit with two other workers from the girls club to work on the chocolate

We talked to them about how the got involved with the Girls Club and how long they have worked there.  For them it started out as community service but turned into an internship and eventually for both full-time jobs.  When all of the chocolate was wrapped we marked the chocolate bars bitter sweet or milk chocolate with the two girls.  Finally we finished our job and Jenny let us go but she told us to go back to our school and start arranging a group for the walkathon, which we plan on doing as soon as possible.