Flexibility in the Face of Firefighters and Fashion

Today was a little weird in terms of our schedule and required Daijah and I to be flexible. It was Career Day, so the students spent the morning shuffling from between classrooms to hear speakers, including a judge, firefighters (with a truck!), and the mayor of East Cleveland. This reduced our teaching time to the time between speakers when the students were waiting in our classroom. In this time we squeezed in the Chopstick Challenge (for culture day) and time to rehearse and edit speeches. For the Chopstick Challenge, we put Christmas ornaments in a small tub of water, and two students raced to pick up the most ornaments with their chopsticks.

Daijah and I also face the additional challenge of missing students. A lot of our students were escorts for Career Day so weren’t in class, while others had planned to participate in the fashion show at the end of the day, so were elsewhere preparing for that. Mrs. Wilkerson helped to plan Career Day so she was out of the classroom for much of the day, too - leaving Daijah and I in charge, which was nothing less than exhausting. Keeping the kids quiet and under control for speakers and Chinese class time was difficult without having Mrs. Wilkerson step in to settle the class down. Despite these challenges, I think we managed to get a decent amount of work done. I made the program for the performance and Daijah started on our banner. The fashion show was a lot of fun, it was cool to see some of our students in it – it made me feel so proud to see them modeling, singing, dancing and having so much fun.

Fashion Show - 

"We Ball! Enough said!"

Today was career day and fashion/talent show at the school so our session had to be split up throughout the day. This turned out to be a benefit as we got to see how the school works during events. It was fun to still be able to get our lesson in while seeing the school function. Mrs. Wilkerson was a big part in the organization of career day so Lauren and I had a big job in taking care of “our class” in her absence. While our project focus is mostly teaching Chinese culture and language, we have immersed ourselves in the school’s culture and it almost feels like we have really become teachers – and more than just an afternoon activity. I can feel the students becoming more comfortable with us and certainly aren’t afraid to show it. We are working hard on making sure everything is organized for the performance and the students have been teaching themselves through research and are all completely done writing their speaking parts and are now memorizing their parts. Hearing the students integrate our lessons excites me!

Gadzooks! Great Goodbye Generates Glum Gang

Final Thursday of project, and it went kind of like this: well. Long story short we were running through the metrics of the tree recruitment plots with the same efficiency as Grant Gilchrist and his lusciously long strides as he backpedals towards the goal on a fast break only to lunge forward towards the apposing striker at the last second and take the ball from him with great ease.  Sorry that the upcoming World Cup got us so hype about soccer.  Anywho, we would travel with the sturdy enclosures to the various sapling shadows, then work our way through the dense network of young treelings.  On our journey, many an Acacian meanderer inquisitively would ask us about our project due to our innately interesting getup and array of tools. Our garb consisted of the absence of sleeves, which would only constrict the necessary circulation needed for our brains to correctly evaluate each plot.  Additionally, we carried the crucial meter frame of PVC, a rubber mallet, the foot-long loppers, measuring tapes, an array of multi-tools, and, of course, our signature headwear. 

            Trees are in the past, and we shifted our focus to the less glamorous, busy work side of science. Our Friday morning consisted of data entry of the various metrics we have been measuring over these last few weeks, assistance came from the great aid that is Microsoft Excel. Seriously, spreadsheets swiftly sorted and secured the surely sacred science that sensei, sassy scientist Sara, sought to sear into our senior souls. Speaking of that rascal, we pilgrimaged to Parma for a truly bittersweet sendoff at WEST CREEK Reservation. Sara and the team impressed us with their informative audiovisual project.  Now, all due respect to the great BEHI predecessors but Rosgen has to hop back onto his Colorodo school bus and take a trip back to Get-Learnedville and see how we do things in Ohio.  Shale can be erodible!  Sorry for the sass, but no one should ignore Sensei Sara’s emails without expecting a little flack from the boys. On a less jocular note, Sara was really a huge help to our project and we will miss her dearly.

Goodbye,

-The Glum Gang

I'm Ebullient, I'm Sad, I'm Ebullient Again

You know how there are times when higher forces can't decide whether Cleveland should be 77 degrees and sunny or 35 degrees with winds that can relocate your typical clan of dwarves (There are typical dwarf families)? Yeah, that was pretty much my day: a ceaseless, ebbing and flowing revolution of emotional peaks and valleys. It began with a downright comical editorial meeting and culminated with me sitting at my desk, staring at a screen, and contemplating my future. Overall, a pretty STACKian day.

Much like the students at Hawken School, employees at STACK seem to come to work with just a little more pep in their collective step on Fridays. This leads me to believe that TGIF accurately applies to just about anyone with 10 fingers and 10 toes. Wisecracking Senior VP, Josh Staph, came in with an all too relatable anecdote about misrecognizing a face and just going with it. Mistaking a veiled, green shirt-sporting man for Andy Haley, a STACK writer, Josh jestingly yelled, "You're late." The man turned his head and made eye contact with Josh. Josh then realized he'd made a mistake, but chose not to correct it as he believes that, "you're always late." Typical Josh.

After the meeting, the day didn't really pick up until after lunch. During the morning I spent a lot of time bouncing between PED research and interesting articles about the state of the media world. Gawker.com published an interesting and slanderous article about what it's like to work at Vice.com.

The day picked up again when I visited Brian. It was originally just supposed to be a quick check-in, but it ended up being a thirty or forty minute conversation about his path into journalism and his thoughts on a set of wide ranging topics. In my opinion, conversations like those are the greatest part about project. He's a professional who's been in the field for a number of years and he gave me about an hour of his time just to talk. It was a great experience.

Once again, the day stagnated for a large chunk of time after our conversation. Not hearing back from sources is incredibly frustrating. However, I was blindsided with an awesome surprise as the day had just about ended. The Red Sox's PR guy got back to Brian and gave the ok to my interview with Breslow. The good news is, come Tuesday, I'll be able to check off "Interview professional athlete" from my bucket list. The bad news is that I have no clue how to conduct this interview. That being said, there's little doubt that I'll willfully sink aboard my ship of pride if I completely botch this thing.

Electric in the air.

 

Writing and Translating and Writing and Translating and Writing and Translating and Writing and Translating and Writing and

Today we are putting the final touches on writing and translating all of the features for the guidebook. It has pretty much been continual work the entire day at the Cleveland Height Lee Road Library, except for a short break to watch the Turn Down for What music video (highly recommended). Rebekah's Puerto Rican friend John and Nora's dad, who spent several years living in Spain, are going to double check all of our Spanish work. I am very excited for the guidebook to be done and printed and very proud of our massive 41 page accomplishment. There is not much to write about today. Rebekah had roast beef and corn for lunch that she brought from home, I had a snack of Cheez-its, and Nora had some cucumber slices.

The most exciting part of the day for me was noticing that in the library's tribute to the late great Maya Angelou, they mistakenly posted that she died at age -14.

Whoops.

Turn up Friday.

Emeline, Nora, and I have been turning up at the library for the past few days. With the end of project quickly approaching, we are trying to finish the guidebook by the end of the day today. This will allow us to turn the book into the printer early Monday morning. Monday-Wednesday of next week will be spent at Esperanza. The librarian told Emeline and I, in a very polite manner, that we were loud and gave us our own meeting room. It was very nice of her, however the chairs were hard and plastic. For lunch, I went to Melt and got a Monte Cristo with honey mustard and berry preserves. Yum!

Finishing up the Guidebook

The past two days we have been finishing up our guidebook which has been a lot of work. Nora and I went around to the neighborhoods of Tremont, Ohio City, and Lakewood to take pictures and meet with somebody from the Downtown Lakewood Business Alliance. We are finishing up writing all of the features and we (well, mostly me) have been translating all of them.

We ran into Ms. Scott and her Middle East class at the West Side market and chatted with her for a little bit about her class and what we are doing. She was wearing an apron that said "Judy's Middle Eastern Cuisine," a gift from a woman who runs a stand that talked to Ms. Scott's class. We have also run into Sindhura and Carly on their Humans of Cleveland escapades (they declined to interview us).

The guidebook will be sent to the printers by tomorrow afternoon, so we are hurrying to get everything done. We'll see how it turns out!