On Monday, December 14th, we were originally scheduled to volunteer at a program called DEER, Drop Everything and Read. It was an animal themed reading program held at the school once a month. When we arrived we found out that the event was actually cancelled because a teacher had called in sick and a class was moved to the library. It was strange to learn that they had to cancel the whole event, because a class was moved to the library. It really shows the fragile state of our schools. They also had a bulletin board with pictures reading “#iampubliced.” Which funnily we didn’t learn until months later that #iampubliced is a campaign by AQENY, one of the main organizations we work with. It was cool to see how all these organizations overlap to help one school. Since the event was cancelled and we had come all the way to 212th st, we organized the library. While we were organizing we noticed a few things. Lots of the kids and adults at the school only spoke Spanish. The lesson, which was about Christmas, was taught 90% in Spanish. The lady helping us sort, only spoke a few words of English herself, which made it really complicated to sort. The kids had a computer room in a small area next to the library with one or two very old computers. We also noticed that surrounding the school was a lot of affordable housing complexes. Which made us wonder how many students came from these buildings. Although the original fieldwork was cancelled, we still had the chance to learn about a lot of the day to day realities in a school like PS 98.