First week of School

The first week of school go off to a great start. We were able to focus a lot on team work and trying new things. We took a field trip to a ropes course where we had a good time working together and even overcoming some fears. I have been impressed with the level of bonding among our students so quickly. While they are not all best friends, the level of cooperation from the start has been great. It is even better to see it extend into the classroom. As the year progresses it gets harder and harder to keep the team focus, but so far spirits have been high.

The human knot

 we work to move a marble from the beginning of the year toward the end  

Trayvon conquers his fear of heights.

EEF Block Party

Last weekend my church hosted a block party. There were games

and music,

and food

and cotton candy!

It was a great time to see so many people from the community come out and celebrate, and worship together. I saw a lot of the kids that come to CHAT tutoring. It was so exciting to see them after being away for a few weeks.

Summer Day Camp

The summer at CHAT means it is time for summer day camp! For me this meant working with 12- and 13- year-old boys and an outdoors elective with boys of all ages. We had a theme of teamwork, and I was pleasantly surprised to see the level of bonding and cooperation that we were able to accomplish by the end of the summer.

My favorite part of the summer was playing at the pool. It seemed like every time we were there, I would have two straight hours of throwing and dunking kids. Every time they would gasp for a breath and then say, "Dunk me again!" 

Community Garden

A few months ago I was sitting with some community members brainstorming things to do with the kids in our summer day camp program. We want to have fun like a normal summer camp but we also wanted to be able to give kids experiences and lessons that could be practical to their lives. One of the ideas was to have a gardening class where  kids could work in local gardens doing everything from planting, to weeding, to harvesting,  to finally eating the fruits of the land. From this meeting I was inspired to start a garden of my own.

Last weekend was a big day in the life of our garden. After many hours spent digging; tilling; picking out: glass, bricks, sparkplugs; and organizing we finally planted seeds in the soil. It has been amazing to see a grass field transformed into a vegetable garden. The most surprising thing in the whole process has been the amount of broken glass that is in the earth. I guess that is what you get when you garden in the inner city.

We have planted:potatoes, tomatoes, carrots, radish, various herbs, sunflowers, peas, beans, squash, and cucumbers. I was a little disappointed that, I had invited a handful of kids to help us plant, but we happened to be planting on the hottest day of the year.The kids said the 90 degree temperatures kept them away. I am sure there will be plenty of work for them to help in the future so I am still hopeful that they will learn with me.

Our first bud was a potato I took from my kitchen and planted a few weeks ago. It is looking great!

Getting ready to plant

Best view of how big the plot is. When we started the land was no different from the grass you see around it.

Snow days

It is snowing in Richmond today...again. I have only taught one day of school this week, and on that day we had a two hour delay so my classes were only 35 minutes.

I have gotten to do a lot of reading, a lot of relaxing, and a lot of bonding with my house mates. At this point though I am tired of having free time and I want to get back to work. When they cancel school they also cancel after school tutoring, so we have also had a severe lack of kids in the house. I did however play a few games of chess with an 8th grader named James in my chess class. He lives a block away and stopped by yesterday.

Below is a picture of the hot air balloon I made a week or two ago. Unfortunately on its maiden flight it caught fire and ended in a small pile of ash. It was a little embarrassing because I had invited James, Pam, and Lavelle (kids down the street that come to tutoring) to watch.

MLK day

Martin Luther King Jr. day was a lot of fun here at CHAT. To honor his work we decided to do a little community service. With about 80 kids and volunteers we went on a competitive trash pick-up around the neighborhood. Ny'ajah, Dink, Destiny, Dashawna, Chauncey and I were able to fill about two large trash bags halfway in the hour we spent looking for trash. I was elated that picking up trash could be so fun. Starting out every piece of trash got counted and enthusiastically thrown into a bag, but within the first few blocks as the count got into the 100's the energy level went down. As with most things in life, the thrill of doing something new  wore off, and by the time we returned I noticed that my whole group would walk past a piece of trash before I would stop to pick it up. Although my group only filled 1-2 bags I was impressed by a group of our high schoolers who were able to fill eleven  trash bags full! I like to think that age and time spent focusing on a task are directly correlated so that I can blame my groups performance on their age and not my leadership.  Either way altogether we collected about 20 bags of trash from the streets.

To reward their hard work we had a little fun as well. We took the whole group to Roller Dome skating rink and then to CiCi's Pizza. Skating was a blast, especially trying to get the youngest kids to let go of the railing and try skating on their own.

I feel sorry for CiCi's Pizza (an all you can eat pizza place) Showing up with 80 people was probably the last thing the employees wanted to see. I can't be sure but if they decide to change their Kids-eat-Free on Monday  night special I can't blame them.

I hope everyone had a great MLK Day.

Merry Christmas

On our last day of after school tutoring the students get together for a picture on my front porch.