Week 4 - Acting & Expect Respect

A quick update about Expect Respect. I pulled some strings with a friend and got us a new location for free for the retreat which was really exciting. I had a meeting with a bunch of the Expect Respect leaders and we really set in stone all the details of the retreat and we will finish finalizing next week. We also started to discuss the specifics of this summer and all of the trainings and the possibilities of having some guest speakers. Not to be brief but I have more important stuff to say about the other part of my project.

Half of my project came to an end last week. It was the week of the show, Voices From the High School, with the Acting 1 kids. On Thursday we got them out of conferencing and did a full dress rehearsal. It went pretty well, way better than both Mr. L or I expected is to, and only went better during the performances. They had their first performance at 4:00. I don't think most of them had any idea what to expect. Their audience was only about ten kids so they weren't really responsive but still putting some people there watching them was a big news flash to a lot of them. At the end during the last monologue where they all line up at the front of the stage it was really cool to look down the line at them and see the kids who had never done a show before that thought they just had one of the coolest experiences ever. The entire class is really into acting and all but one of them signed up for Acting 2 next year. To Mr. L and my surprise, right before the second show, for over 30 family members and friends, Eric said that he changed his mind and will be doing acting class next year. He said it was half because he wanted to and half because his parents were making him, but I think it was a pride thing. He didn't want to admit that he had a good time out there. Then when they did the show for their family, seeing as most of them were parents they got claps and laughs and reactions that none of them expected. Their energy shot through the roof. They all did really well and had a blast doing it and it was great to see that. Some of their scenes didn't get as far as we hoped they would but it was still plenty worth while to see those kids smile and see how excited all of their parents were.

Here is a bunch of video from the morning dress rehearsal. Sorry for the shaking and moving of the camera, I had to take notes while taping it with my digital camera.


First is Stephen and Sheila. This has been one of our consistently strong scenes. We had to work a little bit with Spencer on some of his lines because they were worded a little awkwardly but otherwise this was all on their own. Also, this was their first scene they did for the class at the beginning of the year and they made up most of their blocking on their own with minor adjustments from Mr. L or me.



This next video is one of the three monologues in the show. This one is Jimmy. Mark is a great actor and he really likes it. He is amazing and just reacting in the moment and as anyone who has done acting before they know that acting is reacting. He's really quiet but when you get him on stage he comes out of his shell a lot. He lit up after we did the first run through, he was amazed by all the lights and everything. In this monologue he had to work really hard, it's not an easy topic to talk about but Mark took it and did it well. For his first show, he did really well.



I really wanted to upload one more video to this and I have been trying to the past couple of days but the blog isn't liking that idea very much.

Parflex Division 3

Sorry this is late again.
So I am done with my PowerPoint for harness #503. My sponsor checked it over and he said I am ready to present. All I have to do now is prepare my presentation, make some editorial changes on my PowerPoint, and have my sponsor sign my final papers.

This week was basically the same as usual. I worked at my desk most of the time, trying to make my PowerPoint a masterpiece. I would sometimes go back into the factory and check out a few things. One thing that was different this week is that I had one of the factory workers build the harness by following my PowerPoint directions. She gave me some great help by saying what is helpful and what can removed or replaced. It made me realize that I probably should have done this more often than just once.

Mr. Harris came in today for about 45 minutes. I gave him a little summary about what I've been doing and showed him the factory and built a little bit of the harness in front of him. He was shocked about how complicated the harness looked as a finished project. It isn't really all that complicated if you break it down into step-by-step format. IT just looks a little intimidating. He enjoyed how I've been working hard and the fact that what I'm doing is helpful to the company and will be used after I leave. He said that's a rare case for senior projects, which is nice to hear. I plan on putting some pictures up for our final post. Until next time =)

Sam Mintzer- At the Courthouse

Hope everyone is really enjoying the end of their projects, and can't wait to see everyone soon. A quick shout out to Ozan, Gadi, and TJ, as I just got back from their relay for life dinner and everything was delicious. My project has been pretty interesting the past couple weeks, particularly with a trial I got to spend all of last week with. I saw an aggravated robbery case in which the defendant was convicted of setting up a robbery and executing the robbery during a poker game on the west side, using one of the players help to rob the poker game. It was overall a very interesting case, where the defendant tried to make the room convinced of his innocence, even though there was a ton of witnesses and testimony from co-conspirators that put him at the robbery. Other highlights of the past week was a tour through the county courthouse across the hall that was constructed in the early 1900's and is spectacular, and a tour of where prisoners are kept once they arrive at the Justice Center. Still haven't banged a gavel yet, but still have a couple more days to try and get that in.
See you all soon,
Sam

Cleveland Yoga- Week 3

This has been a very very busy week for me!I taught two classes at my house this week which was sooo exciting!!! I hosted them in my backyard and they only had five people but it was really good experience. Also, a girl who graduated teacher training with me and is a Junior at Orange has decided to teach a series of classes with me this summer. I have finally made it around to taking every teacher's class at cleveland yoga which is soo great because I have discovered different teaching styles and frameworks that I have enjoyed but never would have tried on my own.

I have been really struggeling with the cleanse and being vegan. It is SOO something I want to do--but wanting to do it and actually doing are two very different things. I am trying a new approach: baby steps. I will start by only eating dairy/eggs in my house- that way I can control where I am getting them from. Hopefully I can find the willpower to stick with it!!!

Today the senior project girls drove to Ursaline to take pictures of us in different poses. They have a beautiful garden called the labryinth and we took the pictures in the center of it. I will use them in my final presentation.

See you all soon!!!

Evan S Teaching Music to Children (Week 3)

I had a very busy week 3 at Ruffing!

Last Wednesday was their spring concert. Monday and Tuesday were devoted to rehearsing everything on the stage in the gymnasium. I was there to help make sure things ran smoothly and also to accompany three choir pieces on the piano. I played for one fourth grade piece, "I Bought Me a Cat," one fifth and sixth grade piece, "How Can I Keep from Singing" (which coincidentally is going to be sung at our graduation this year), and one middle school, German piece whose name escapes me. It was something like "Heindenroslein," but it's not that important.

Oh yay! I just got a call about a callback for a summer show I auditioned for! Anyway, back to the blog...

The day concert for the rest of the school went well, as did the evening concert for the parents. After the evening concert, something happened to me that made my whole project completely worthwhile. I left the school and went to my car which was parked on a side street. I was just sitting and browsing through my iPod when all of a sudden a woman tapped on my window. I rolled it down, and she began by saying "thank you." I was just silent as I didn't know what to say, and then she introduced herself as a parent of a fourth grader who's in the chorus. She told me that she thought what I'm doing - working with the students and sharing what I know about music - is great. Her son, who's very much into music, had told her about my project. For almost the whole time she spoke to me, I couldn't really say anything but "thank you" and the like because I was so touched. It made me so happy! Definitely one of the highlights of my project.

Thursday was luckily a more relaxing day during which the gym was put back in order and the music room was restored to its original state with all of its instruments in their places.

On Friday, I worked with the younger grades, kindergarten through third graders, in a variety of activites. In most of the classes we played games as a celebration of the almost-end-of-the-year. I was able to lead some warming up exercises and even teach some dances to classes. The highlight of this day was what happened in the afternoon. One class made up of first through third graders performed "The Tale of Peter Rabbit" for the kindergartners. There were also a couple special adult visitors...Anyway, one of the music teachers, Jennie, read the story of Peter Rabbit from the storybook, pausing every so often to allow for a song to be played while the children acted out the story. I had the job of running (or hopping, get it? ha...not really) around the room to make sure all of the children who were supposed to be playing actually were playing and playing the right notes on the Orff instruments (xylophones). It was a blast. I've learned from this activity specifically, having done it a few times now, that all I can do is tell the students what to play even if it's not perfect. I just have to smile and encourage them, otherwise their spirits are lowered. It was a fun week.

Hi Everyone! 

So far, several things with my project have gone terribly wrong. From miscommunications concerning the date of the recital, to not being able to get the materials that I need, to my accompanist being busy on the date that I chose, to having other school events be surprise-scheduled for the same date and time as my recital. I've had it all. And it's been sort of stressful, but it's also been sort of exciting. In an adventurous sort of way. Having all of these mishaps and being forced to deal with them (seeing as I can't postpone or cancel my recital, that is, if I want to graduate) has sort of given me a little perspective on the choices I've made that have led to the disasters. 

I've been thinking a lot about the first couple weeks of project and the decisions and plans that I made, and what I could have done differently to save myself the anxiety later. If I could go back, I would have taken care of all of the simple but important things early on, even in the weeks leading up to May. It probably would have been a good idea to nail down the date and my repertoire before hand, that way I might have been able to skip the scheduling conflicts and gotten the word out earlier so nobody scheduled a coffeehouse for the same night:) 

Regardless, I'm just trying now to enjoy myself. I'm rehearsing a bunch, singing all the time. And I'm trying to take solace in the fact that, two weeks from now it will all be done with and I'll be graduating! 

Good luck! 

Adrienne

Week Three (Esperanza)-Layla Rhymes with Shayla

This week at Esperanza I had the pleasure of meeting 6th grader Layla. Layla is a very sweet and shy girl, unable to even say hi as she walks into Esperanza each day.Being shy myself, I was excited to work with Layla and discover the girl hidden inside: what a pleasant surprise! She's a very funny girl, and she's passionate about many things. By tutoring her, I am learning that she is a very smart girl. After only reading a chapter once, she is able to recall word-for-word several lines from the book (Holes by Luis Sachar) that we are currently reading together. However, due to her old school, there are some holes in her learning. For example, when doing math, she has learned long division before, but because that school encourages children to use calculators because some of the teachers have "given up" on trying to teach these essential skills, she doesn't remember how to do long division because she hasn't had enough practice.

Today,I found out that she wants to be a fashion designer or a model when she grows up! I am very interested in the fashion industry, so I enjoyed getting to research the fashion industry with her. I fully intend on bringing her fashion magazines to look at during lunch! :D Getting to work one-on-one with Layla has been the best part of my project so far because I enjoy working with her and uncovering the secret treasures that she has hidden inside her!

Week 3 - Acting & Expect Respect

Last week wasn't too bad but as I head into this week and next week I am on stress overload. I am overbooked beyond belief and there is nothing I can do about it. One part of my senior project is at school which goes on from 8 to 3 and then the other part is in the office with Dahlia who is usually only in the office from about 12 to 6 depending on what meetings she has that day and such. Both things are going on at the same time and it is to the point where in order to get everything done I am literally driving back and forth between JFSA and Hawken multiple times a day.

It's the week of the show and I am trying to get everything figured out with Mr. L so that hopefully we can put together a complete and finished show on Thursday. We're cramming to get the lights, costumes and sounds figured out and the students aren't being any help. Most of them are forgetting everything they are supposed to do and they currently don't seem too worried about the fact that the show is in three days.
At Expect Respect, we are trying to finalize a million things. We just had our last meeting of the year yesterday so I planned that out last week so now I'm behind on some other Expect Respect projects. This morning I had a meeting with some other ER members to figure out some details and then I rushed to get back here but didn't make it to class to help work on stuff for the show. Now I'm writing this in my 10 minutes of free time before I meet with Mr. L to work on the show and then rush over to JFSA to work with Dahlia who is now throwing a ton at me because its crunch time.

I'm needed at two places at once constantly. After I'm done every day I basically have time to eat dinner and get my work out for college in or go to my soccer practice and then I'm prepping for the next day. Even on the weekends I don't have time to breathe between playing soccer and catching up on my college workout site that I'm supposed to fill out everyday. Next week is going to be even worse adding the end of project and all the senior festivities and our Cabaret show for Musical theatre performance class, oh and my birthday which I officially found out today that I will be running around from 8 am until 9 pm that day so I won't even get to rest then.

I understood that I wasn't allowed to be working only on campus for my senior project but now with how stressed out I am and how much I'm losing it I'm understanding less and less. My goal is to get through these next two weeks alive and hopefully have a moment to rest and to not regret these amazing opportunities I've had during it but have not had time to enjoy.

Week Three: Rika (Esperanza Means Hope)

[Sorry; I couldn't find the page break icon!]

The facts in the following story are true. However, elements of people’s identities have been changed to preserve their privacy and anonymity.

It isn’t long after Rika enters the room that the quiet and orderly space suddenly turns on its head.

“¡Hola! Magdalena, ¿qué te pasa hoy en la clase de inglés? La profesora dijo que Mariból y tú estuvieran hablando, y entonces Juanito vino y…”

“Rika! Please be quiet, and stop bugging Magdalena! Yes, you’re in the afterschool program now, but you still need to follow rules.”

Huffing and puffing out her cheeks, Rika harrumphs and swings her book bag down hard on top of Magdalena’s desk. Her grey hoodie lands with equal force. “Sorry miss,” she says. Her words may be apologetic but her eyes sparkle with a hint of mischief.

Janet sighes. “You understand what I’m saying, right Rika? Please take your seat. You can talk to Magdalena after we have all had dinner.”

“Yes miss,” chimes Rika. With one sweeping motion she scoops up her bag and hoodie and sashays across the room. She looks at me and exclaims, “Hi, Miss!” before plopping down in her seat.

“Okay, class,” says Janet. “Now that everyone is ready, it’s time to go over the rules of the afterschool program. Can someone raise their hand and tell me the first rule of our program?”

A second grader’s hand shoots up. “Raise your hand if you have a question.”

“Correct! Now, can anyone tell me what the second rule would…”

“Miss! You know, I really need to talk with Magdalena about what happened earlier today….”

“Rika! Didn’t I tell you to wait until we were done with explaining our after school program’s rules? Now, who can tell me…”

“I’m so hungry. Can we eat now? I’m so hungry.”

“Rika! What did I just say?”

“But miiissssss, I’m huuuuunngryyyyyyy!!!!!!!!!”

“You’ll be able to eat after we finish up the list of rules. Come on, Rika, there are only two more. What’s the next one?”

Rika sits completely still. Then she rolls up her sweater and places her head on her make-shift pillow.

“Rika, I know you know the next rule. Would you please tell the class so that we can move on with the lesson?”

Silence.

“Alright, Rika. You don’t have to answer. Jane, can you tell me what the next rule…”

“Is she ever going to stop speaking? I’m sooooooooo hungryyyyyyyyyy!!!!!”

“Rika! That’s it. Fourth graders do NOT behave this way. You’re just going to have to wait out in the hall until the rest of us are done going over the rules. Dana,” Janet says turning to me, “will you please accompany Rika outside in the hallway while she waits?”

“Sure thing,” I say. Janet shakes her head as Rika jumps up and skips out the doorway.

When we’re outside, Rika starts fiddling with the combinations on each of the lockers in the first floor hallway of Luis Muñoz. I smile. When she notices this, she looks up and smiles back.

“Miss, do you have to go to swimming practice again like the other day?” she asks. I nod, a bit surprised that she remembered something about me like that.

“Yup,” I say, “I can only stay until 3:30, because practice starts at 4:30, and I need to get down to the pool at CSU on time.”

“I want to go swimming with you!” she exclaims, her eyes wide and shining. So as not to completely crush her hopes, I say, “Maybe. By the way, Rika, do you play any sports?”

“No. But sometimes I’ll play basketball with my brothers at the Y on weekends when they need an extra player.”

“That’s really cool.”

“Yeah. But I want to learn to swim. Do you have to do that thing where they jump off of those squares and dive into the water? I want to do that.”

“What, you mean diving in off of the starting block?” I ask. I bend down and take the starting position, trying to mimic how I would push my legs and throw my arms if I were going to compete in a race. “Like this?”

“Yeah! Just like that!” she exclaims, her face shining again.

“Well, you’re tall for your age. I’m sure you’d make a great swimmer or basketball player.” She looks at me for a moment, holding my gaze. The smile leaves.

“I used to live in Puerto Rico when I was younger,” she tells me. “When we lived there, I got all A’s. But here, everything is taught in English. It’s harder for me. That’s why I’ve been held back twice. I was never held back in Puerto Rico. But here, because I don’t understand English as well…” She clasps her hands behind her back and her foot plays with imaginary dust on the floor.
“Rika,” I say, “you know that even if you were held back, you’ll still be ahead of most other kids your age if you can speak and write in both Spanish and English.”

“I know,” she says, looking up at me. “That’s why I keep trying hard every day. If I keep working on my English skills, then I’ll be on top!” She grins large and wide, as if to say, It’ll be alright. I shake my head, a sense of wonder filling my soul. She narrows her eyebrows, misunderstanding the gesture.

“I’m sure you will be, Rika. I’m sure you will.”

“Yeah!” she exclaims, giving me the thumbs up. From inside the classroom, I hear chairs scraping and tennis shoes skidding on the floor.

“Hey, Rika, I think that the other kids have gotten their food. Why don’t we go ask if we can go back inside, okay?”

“Alright! Food, food, food, food…”

A small giggle escapes my lips as I twist the knob to open the door.

Parflex Division 2

Second week into my project; hasn’t gotten anymore exciting than the first. I finished my PowerPoint on Harness 503 and all I have left to do is to check it over with the engineers and factory workers, which I will do Thursday. Since I finished earlier than they expected, they are giving me another harness to work on. This harness is a lot smaller and only has 4-5 tubes in it and takes 5 minutes to make (Harness 503 had about 33 tubes and took 45 minutes to an hour to make).
Probably the most exciting thing about this project is my laptop. They are testing out windows 7 at the office and they have about 3 prototypes. They allowed me to use one of them. It’s very small and very useful. I usually carry it with me to the factory and lay it next to the table and work on the harness.
The factory workers couldn’t be nicer. They are very helpful and enjoy my company. They all believe that I’m going to be their boss four years in the future (but they don’t know that I wouldn’t work there if my life depended on it). I once had Cavs tickets and had an extra one and everyone wanted to go. They offered me food, drinks, even money. I didn’t end up taking any of them. They didn’t mind afterward since it was an awful game (sorry Jake). They are die heart Cavs fans, which was cool until we lost. They haven’t mentioned them since.
For the past 3 days, I haven’t touched a harness. I’ve been mostly in my cube working on my PowerPoint. When I finished last week, I had absolutely nothing to do. My sponsor was out so I couldn’t ask what to do. So I just sat there for the last hour of the day, which wasn’t fun.
Sadly the best part of the day is lunch break. I drive out to the near by Sheetz gas station and eat my packet lunch in my car. I listen to music and text Myles mostly (I have no service at Parflex so no one can contact me). This senior project has its moments, but they don’t come frequently enough. I’m counting down the days until June 2.

Ruffing! week 2

I taught my first seminar discussion class this week and i was surprised at how interesting the experience was. I am currently teaching two classes the book "Ishmael" by Daniel Quinn, a philosophical discourse on environmentalism and I teach the same class twice in the same day. Once at 10:30 in the morning i teach the first half of 7th and 8th graders and i teach the other half at 1:30. This was the first week we had content to talk about since i had only introduced the book last week and done creative writing in class. I was surprised mostly about two things:




1. The time of day affects the alertness of a class much more than it appears. As a student I was always a little slower after lunch but I never imagined it to the degree i encountered. The morning class was fully alert and active and participated and the afternoon class nearly slept through the entire class (not really, but you get my point)

2. When people start talking/discussing the class almost teaches itself. I have an utmost respect for english teachers now. Teaching a seminar class full of students who don't talk is a nightmare. In my 10:30 class i had 6-7 students who were content to discuss and debate for most of the class, answering my questions and even bringing less talkative members of the class into the conversation. On the other hand in my 2:30 class, i only had 2-3 people talk throughout the entire class. I was continually struggling to get other people into the discussion. It was very discouraging, especially after having such a good first class.

Anyway, I also helped out at the Judson project, a project where Middle School kids talk to elderly people in their community in an attempt to find out their lifes story. Alongside that i've been helping the Middle School students write their graduation speeches which is always a lot of fun.

~Linus

Esperanza, Inc.-Week 2

This week at Esperanza has been full of visitors. The one that stands out most in my mind is the visit from the United States Air Force Academy. The presentation consisted of accounts from two graduates of the academy, a short film about the academy, and an informative question and answer session. The buzz of airplanes always gets everyone excited and full of intrigue, especially when it comes to the seventh and eighth grade audience at Esperanza. While the presentation itself taught me much that I didn't know before about the USAFA (like it only accepts 1200 people out of the 12,000+ that apply each year-wow), the best and most entertaining part of the presentation was the question and answer session. It was always great to see the looks on the representatives' faces when the kids shouted out questions like "How many push-ups can you do in a minute? Don’t lie." The representative answered “136,” but from the disbelieving groans that emerged from the audience, I think that many of the kids suspected some dishonesty on the representative’s part. After the kids finished quizzing the representatives, it was their turn to turn the tables by asking the kids what they wanted to be when they grew up. The eclectic group of answers ranged from pediatrician to soldier to chef. However, I think the kids took away the uniform message of the afternoon: in order to be what you want to be, you have to work hard.

Cooking- Week 2

This was a big week for us. Our knowledge of basic skills is really starting to show. After the first week and up through this week we have really been practicing our knife skills a lot and they are now almost second nature. There is a huge difference between this past week and the first week as far as the kind of questions we ask and help we seek from our sponsor. The first week we would double check a lot of things with our sponsor before we did them, but this week we are cooking with more confidence and skill. The second week we asked our sponsor to take more of a role of an onlooker as we wanted to see if the skills we learned the first week could translate to us making meals without much assistance. The results were very pleasing. We made several dishes that we can confidentially say we could remake by our selves. We're beginning to see project pay off! we prepared a couple different types of meat this week and worked with may vegetables and spices to enhance the taste of the chicken and steaks. We have continued our work of planning for the benefit dinner which is approaching rapidly. We have made a plan for the 3rd week, which will consist of experimenting with deserts and other dishes to try to perfect our menu for the dinner. Flipping through books of recipes and marking down everything we want make is making us sad that project is already half finished and we wish that project could go a couple more weeks. Overall the three of us are really satisfied with our improvement thus far and look forward to the next two weeks as our skills in the kitchen grow exponentially each day.

Cleveland Yoga Week 2

This past week at Cleveland Yoga has been very busy! One of our requirements from CY is to take one yoga class a day and try out a new teacher each day (amazing!!) While I have been practicing yoga at this studio for about two years, there are many teachers that I haven't taken from. It has been very interesting for me to really notice the different styles each teacher has- some are very spiritual, while others are just into the physical aspects. This has been particularly helpful for me in that I have just finished my own teacher training and I am trying to discover my own style and what kind of teacher I want to be.

The senior project girls (there are 5 of us) are starting a 21-day cleanse and we began today. The cleanse is no gluten, sugar, alcohol, caffeine, and animal products. I completed this same cleanse with my teacher training group last month so I am not doing the full cleanse again. This time, I'm just modifying it and only eliminating the animal products which has proven to be a difficult task so far. I am already a vegetarian and have easily given up eggs, but the dairy is hard to eliminate because it is in SOOO much of what we eat. Ice cream is also my true weakness...

But I am TRULY enjoying spending so much time at the yoga studio and deepening my practice.

One tip for long posts

I can't tell you how much I've been enjoying reading your posts about what you're up to on project. I'm looking forward to seeing you all tomorrow at 2:30 in the White House in person, as well!

I wanted to point out one tool that can be useful to you if (as some of you, delightfully, have done) you end up writing a longer piece, like Dana's story or really anything by David. If you look on the toolbar as you're composing a post, you'll see a little broken piece of paper that looks like this:

If you click on it, it'll insert a "break" into your post, wherever you specify, so the first few paragraphs will appear on the main page, but then in order to read more, people will have to click on "Read More."

Doing this is a kind service to readers of the blog who want to be able to scroll through and see several posts on the first page, but not necessarily read all of your post right away.

Anyway, see you tomorrow.

Ruffing Music Week Two (Evan S)

Because I've already elaborated on what has happened during the first two weeks of project at Ruffing, I'm going to post about the experience I had this past Friday.

Every year at Ruffing for part of the year, the eighth graders are matched with a resident at Judson, which is a home for senior citizens. The residents share their life stories with the students in an attempt to build a relationship with them. Then, at the end of the program on the last week, there is a tea in which the students and their families meet with all of the residents and have a little tea party. The students typically read things they wrote and perform songs.

This past Friday, I went with the music teacher, Jennie, and the eighth graders to Judson to help out with all things music (and what turned into much more). I helped set up the stage with the Orff instruments and helped get the students settled for their piece, a blues composition with a bit of Elvis's "Hound Dog." It was a dreadful performance, but the residents didn't know the difference!

I sat at a table with a couple of students whose residents could not make it to the program that day. During that time I had some yummy treats and enjoyed listening to the students pass the microphone from table to table and sharing their "then and now" stories. Each pair of student and resident was assigned a topic for which they had to talk about what it was like back when the resident was the age of the student, and what it's like for the student now. The topics ranged from things like school dress to birthday parties to what's fun to do on weekends.

A highlight of the day for me was meeting up with a resident with whom I was paired when I was in eighth grade at Ruffing. It was a nice reunion.

After everything ended, I helped pack up the instruments and went back to Ruffing to help teach some young children's music classes.

Week Two - Acting & Expect Respect

This week I ran into the wonderful crisis that many non-profit organizations run into time and time again. I said last week that I had booked the sheep barn for our retreat. Well, once we booked it they came back saying it was going to cost $600.00 in order to use the space. Even with a Case Alumn it ended up being way too expensive, we basically have no money to spend on the location if we want to feed anyone. Also, with this, we ran into the issue that now it looks like we will probably end up using a synagogue for our location. Our initial plans was to provide a kosher dinner, running through a jewish organization means we have to have kosher meals, and then have everyone pack their own lunch. Now that we are probably going to be in a synagogue all meals have to be kosher so we now have to provide both meals for the day. I spent most of my time my first day in the office this week working on figuring out new location options and figuring out the logistics of feeding everyone.

Cooking week 2

Cooking this week was much different than it was during the first week mainly because we were mostly on our own, without much help from our sponsor. Last week whenever we were confused about a recipe, we were able to ask our sponsor and get her take as to what the directions exactly mean. A lot of the time she wasn't a hundred percent sure as to what it meant either, however she taught us how to guess and how to sort of go with what you believe it means even if you are not completely sure. This week we were able to experience this on our own while cooking dishes such as chicken quesadillas, Pico de Gallo, paninni sandwiches and many different breakfast foods as well.
The quesadillas turned out very well and this was a good dish to cook because it required the skills that we had learned during the first week such as cutting and preparing chicken. The paninni sandwiches also came out wonderful and the good thing about making this dish is that we didn't necessarily have to follow a certain recipe, but rather we could put whatever we wanted and however much of something we wanted in our sandwiches.
During this week, we also experienced our first failure. On Thursday we decided to make crapes and we had a good recipe on how to make them. However while we were cooking them, we weren't exactly sure how much batter to put in the pan and the first few attempts didn't turn out very well. They came out to thin and they began to rip in half and pieces of the crapes kept sticking to the pan. We were eventually able to get a couple decent ones out after trying different ideas, but even though they didn't turn out as good as we would have liked, i believe that this experience served us well as we continue to develop skills that will help us learn how to cook on our own.

Week Two: The New Girl (Esperanza Means Hope)

The facts in the following story are true. However, elements of people’s identities have been changed to preserve their privacy and anonymity.
We enter the fluorescent-lighted sixth grade classroom.

Janet, Amelia, and I are about to begin Spanish class. Janet, our project sponsor from Esperanza, is also a local college education major who is completing her student teaching requirement for graduation. Emi and I are teachers’ aides who take instruction from her.

Janet sets a poster down on the table. Señora Rodriguez, Janet’s advisor and friend, has already taken a seat next to one of the students and is currently taking attendance. The room is noisy, and just like any other classroom, harmless insults— ¡Cállate! No, ¡cállate tú!—fly around the room. Many of the students at Luis Muñoz Marín School are bilingual. Whether their first language is Spanish or English, they are exposed to the other via their classmates. But what makes the school unique is that Luis Muñoz is committed to making its students literate in both languages. The school, then, is a living laboratory for teaching reading and writing in two languages to a mixed population of native speakers in either or both.

After Señora Rodriguez finishes with attendance, Janet notices one girl in the corner who has not been accounted for.

“Are you a new student?” she asks. Heads swivel in the new girl’s direction, and the girl only nods. “What is your name?”

The girl stares at Janet, her sequin-studded red headband sparkling against her jet black hair. Pen and paper in hand, Janet tries again. “Your name?” she asks, holding the pen ready to write. The girl opens her mouth to speak and mutters something too softly for anyone to hear.

“¿Cómo te llamas?” one of the boys close to her snaps. The girl looks at him, then back to Janet.

“Lakisha,” the girl whispers.

“Lakisha. L-A-K-E…”

“L-A-K-I…” the girl corrects.

“S-H-A?” The girl nods.

“Okay. Well, welcome to our class Lakisha; it’s great to have you here,” says Janet.

Ruffing!

Like Evan, i'm also doing my senior project at Ruffing Montessori school. I split my time teaching in the middle school and helping out in the admissions/alumni office. I also end up doing odd jobs for the faculty and staff so I usually have a fair amount of work.

I teach two Novel/Writing classes in the middle school to about 30ish kids. The class meets every Monday for an hour and it's divided into two sections, both which are mixed 7th and 8th grade (in true Montessori style). Currently we're reading and discussing the book "Ishmael" by Daniel Quinn, a philosophical discussion on various social and environmental issues. I taught it for the first time this last Monday when we started the book and we did an in class creative writing on creation myths. Both classes are very smart and most of the kids wanted to share what they wrote. I was surprised because I remember not very many people wanting to share when I was in middle school. It's also surprising that people accept me in an authority position, I'm very much used to being a student. What I find most gratifying about the teaching so far is the fact that I learn a lot from having to explain philosophical and environmental ideas to other students.

In the Admissions office I mostly end up doing paperwork and corresponding with incoming parents about missing forms and the various obligations they have before their child can start attending ruffing. It's not the most cutting edge work but I find it a good balancing agent to the very verbal and social aspect of teaching. I also enjoy talking to prospective parents (for 2010-2011/2011/2012) because I really enjoyed going to Ruffing. I always have something to say, and I know my way around the campus and the Montessori school system to a good enough degree that I can help any confused parents.

All in all a very fun senior project so far.

Teaching Music to Children (Evan S)

For my project, I've been going to my old school, Ruffing Montessori, every day and have been an assistant to the music teachers. There are classes all throughout the school day, so I'm kept busy all the time.

Each grade is divided into separate classrooms, so generally there is one grade from one class having class at a time, unless the classes are small. If they are small, then they are combined with another class of the same grade. While there are different music classes for the different classes of grades (confusing, I know), each grade has been learning about the same thing.

Kindergarten: Last week there was a guest cellist from The Cleveland Orchestra who came to teach the children about the cello. He did this by playing different songs about animals such as "The Swan" and "Flight of the Bumblebee" to show how the cello can produce many different sounds. This week the kindergartners played circle games in which they had to keep the beat to a song while singing it. It was challenging for them not to tap on every word that was sung.

1st-3rd: The first through third graders put on productions of "Peter Rabbit." They did this by acting out the story as it was told by one of the music teachers and one of my sponsors, Jennie, and sang songs while playing simple patterns on Orff instruments (they're like xylophones).

The fourth grade chorus has been practicing their songs for the Spring Concert which is coming up this Wednesday. I have been accompanying one of their songs on the piano.

The fifth grade has been preparing a song about locomotives for the Spring Concert. I have worked over a few days with a select group of fifth graders to construct and paint a cardboard locomotive engine in which one child can "ride" around during the song. It's been a long process, but finally we finished painting today and I'm really impressed with the result. The group that has been working on it is SO focused and they work extremely well with each other.

The sixth graders have been on a trip to Williamsburg, so I haven't worked with them yet.

The seventh graders, in addition to those who are in the middle school choir, have worked on their Orff piece which is centered around Vivaldi's "Spring." They have created a medley of pieces that sound like and represent "Spring-like" things such as birds, flowery meadows, and bagpipes. They play through all of the pieces with the Vivaldi "Spring" theme appearing twice in the line up.

The eighth graders have been studying the Blues and Motown. They have composed some pieces to play on the Orff instruments that go along with the theme of Elvis' "Hound Dog."

I've been helping the students with their respective activities when needed. I've also begun to teach song games to the younger children. I enjoy getting involved and seeing what each of them has to share.

District Qualifiers!

This week for me was only a half week at NASA, because thurs and fri the tennis team had the sectional tournament, and charlie and I in doubles, and ryan smith and danny lubarsky in singles all qualified for districts! Seeding matches are to be played on sat and districts is next week to see who qualifies for states.

But at NASA I have started testing my rig in the vacuum chamber. Its a more crammed space, so its a lot tougher to figure out how to fit everything and it takes a lot longer to test everything because you have to test it at a series of different pressures (760 torr (atmospheric pressure), 700, 600, 500, 400, 300, 200), and at each one you have to wait for the temperature to level out or at least slow down. This is very important because density and viscosity of air plays a very important part in the cyclone equations, and they change for different pressures and temperatures and even a subtle difference if unaccounted for can throw off the analysis. However, pumping it down to the different pressures is actually quite a bit of fun, at least for me, because you have to flip a bunch of switches to get it going, but then judge when you need to turn it off and then go around as quickly as you can and turn them all off so that it lands on the pressure you want (like turn it off at 530 torr to hit 500). If you miss you can leak out some of the air to raise the pressure back up, but that's less fun. I am almost done testing the cyclones in series, but was delayed in the middle by questionable results.

On wednesday while taking data letting air back in to take data at the different pressures again, I noticed that the data was significantly lower than what it had been when I had pumped down. I then pumped down and let air back in taking data the entire time just to see what would happen, and it agreed with the pump up, but was all off from the first pump down. In chemistry or physics I would just wave this off and keep going, assuming I had done something wrong the first time, but I mentioned this to my mentor, and quickly realized that in a governmental agency or any scientific organization at this level, this was a bad idea. We spent the rest of the day taking data going down and up with different pressure transducers (what measure the data we take for the cyclones) and testing various other components that could be responsible and have to now compare the data when I get back on tuesday. We aren't sure what happened, but it could also explain my mentor's erroneous results during earlier testing, so we can't really go on until we figure this out so that we know what data we can trust for our conclusions, and what needs to be redone. We will see what happens.

At the Courthouse

Hello all, hope everyone is enjoying their senior projects. I am spending my time at the Cleveland Justice Center and shadowing various cases tried by Common Pleas Judges of Cuyahoga County. My sponsor has gotten me into chambers to see various negotiations in civil cases, and I have been in sentencing hearings for different rape and murder cases. (You might see me on the news tonight in the background for a hearing I was watching) Overall, I have learned a lot about how the judicial system works and the importance of a competent lawyer has on a case. I have seen how significant the role of a jury is as the court system wouldn't function without a jury. A sample of some cases I have followed in depth: Aggravated arson that burned down an apartment building which killed four children, a double homicide on two elderly women by their handyman, and various civil lawsuits that take place in the court. I have seen a lot of gruesome things in the courtroom such as various pictures and videos, and read transcripts and records that are really sad, and at times this can be a little depressing. However, I am learning a lot about the inner workings of the court, how it functions, and am enjoying time off from classes and seeing something that captivates me on a daily basis.
Hope you all are well,
Sam

Esperanza, Inc.

Hi everyone, sorry my post is late. For my senior project, I am volunteering at Esperanza, inc., which is a non-profit organization devoted to bettering the lives of the Latino Community in Cleveland. Esperanza works with many different schools by finding mentors and tutors for the children. In my project, I am experiencing first-hand the way a non-profit organization is run. I work in the Esperanza office each day, usually doing whatever work that needs to be completed like entering data in a database or filing information.

On certain days in the morning, I help teach computer classes to many adults from the area. About half of the students speak mostly spanish, with some knowledge of the English language but not much, so I'm discovering how truly hard it is to communicate when my Spanish vocabulary falls short of what I need to say. However, my vocab is expanding, and I'm familiarizing myself with computer-related vocab.

From 3-5 p.m., the school kids come in for an after school program, in which they receive food and usually listen to a speaker. The most recent speaker was from Diversity in Action, but instead of lecturing, the speaker used activities such as the Telephone game and role-playing in order to convey the importance of diversity, tolerance, and acceptance to the children. I had the pleasure of participating in these activities and observing the way the kids reacted to each exercise, making connections between what goes on in their schools and what happened in the different scenes the children portrayed. I'm enjoying getting to know the kids and discovering each one's personality. It's always exciting to see what a great difference Esperanza is making in these children's lives and how happy the children are to be there.

Parflex Division

First: Sorry this is late.
I am working at the Parflex Division of the large engineering company "Parker Hannifin." I was contacted by Jane Heim about a few months before this started. She told me that I would be working on an air tube harness #3866503 for an Oshkosh truck. That pretty much scared me from day one. I had no idea what an air tube harness was. Couldn't even guess what the numbers stood for, and I thought the "Oshkosh" was just a typo for some other word I probably wouldn't know. I didn't really bother to worry about it until I got here. Turns out an air tube harness is a bunch of long tubes attached together that are used for trucks and other vehicles. This specific harness, labeled #3899503 (or just 503 for short), is for an Oshkosh truck, a truck that is of military use. My goal was simple: learn how to make this harness and create a detailed PowerPoint that will allow any untrained worker to create this harness from scratch. When I first visited Parflex in April, the task didn't seem that hard. I watched the factory workers work on these long rubber tubes. They taped them together, wrapped them around, and placed them in a specific order. All in all, each harness takes about 45 minutes to make. Since I was new at it, I would think I would take no more than an hour. I can learn the basics of it, type up a PowerPoint, and be ready in less than a week. This seemed to be simple. Well of course it wasn't simple. Making the harness was extremely difficult. You have to follow this confusing print out that is laid in front of you and taping all of them together with the tape couldn't be more difficult. I finally was able to finish my first harness today and it took me a good two hours. I'm almost done with my PowerPoint but I know that will need much revising. The work can be fun sometimes. Other times it can get tedious and very boring. But the workers are really nice and aren't afraid to help me. All in all, this senior project is enjoyable at times.

Hi all:) Sorry I’m late.

So far my project has been pretty low key. The first week of project was also tech week for spring theatre project, so I spent pretty much every waking moment running lines for that.

As far as project goes, I just tried to lay as much groundwork as I could so that when STP was over, I could dive right in and be as productive as I could. That didn’t work as well as I would have liked because, conveniently, last week was also tech week for the show I was assistant directing at my old school St Gregs. Most everything was set in stone by that point, so all I really had to do was show up, be on book, keep the kids quiet (To my dismay, it seems they prefer this to be done non-violently). Which, if you’ve ever been in a hot sweaty gym with 150 hormonally over-stimulated twelve and thirteen year olds, you know isn’t the most relaxing task. But anyway, this week I’ve been focusing on the performance aspect of my project. Caucusing with my sub-sponsor, John Paul Soto, and my live-in musical consultant, my dad, solidifying the basics of my senior recital. Basics like venue, repertoire, date, time, invite list, etc… It’s not the most exciting, but it has to be done. Good luck all of you. Until next week.

Gotta take the data, whether you like it or not, even at NASA

The Cyclones

This week I continued testing filters, and have now been directed more towards the cyclone filters and seeing what differences it makes to have them in series or in parallel. While testing the cyclones, I got data that was different than the data my mentor had gotten in his research for a paper he was planning to publish in a month, and he quickly had to go redo a lot of his testing and change some of his figures and conclusions. Seeing this happen, and hearing how he went about it and helping him do so, I learned some important lessons.

First, you need multiple people in every lab, each with a different background. When trying to figure out what was going on, my mentor repeatedly asked his labmate questions on the fluid physics side because it wasn't his area of expertise, and then the lab-mate would come up with something, but wouldn't be able to figure out how to apply it correctly without my mentor's help, but together they figured out what had happened and were able to get the information they needed. Second, you always need to test and retest, and measure absolutely everything possible, because you never know what could come up, and even if it doesn't seem like it should happen, you have to take reality over your expectations. On a whim, my mentor decided to measure the temperature of the air inside the vacuum chamber as he ran it and discovered that the temperature with the blower running reached over 60 degrees C, which was insanely hot and could have messed up his results again if he hadn't measured it and figured out how to compensate. The moral of the story was just that you always have to be willing to change your hypothesis and cannot make conclusions until you are absolutely sure that you can explain fully what is going on, and have repeated test situations to prove it. The other important lesson that came out of this for me, is that just because a paper is published, it doesn't mean the data or conclusions are completely right, even from a place as big as NASA. You really can't trust everything you read, and have to test it yourself to figure out what is going on.


The set up I put together and modify daily to test new things. Right now it is dismantled as it is about to placed in a vacuum chamber for further testing.

But I am very excited, because this week I am going to test my rig in the vacuum chamber and get data that my mentors say no one has ever gotten. They want me to start writing up a paper and who knows, maybe I will get to be an author on a paper they publish this summer!

Week One- Esperanza Means Hope

(photo of Luis Muñoz Marín School courtesy Cleveland.com)

Hi everyone! I hope all of your senior project endeavors are going well!

I have had a great and exciting first week of project. Emi Mainardi and I are working with a local non-profit organization called Esperanza, Inc., which is a Cleveland based program that places Spanish-speaking tutors in various schools in the Cleveland Metropolitan School District. Esperanza was designed to support students whose first language is Spanish, but it also brings Spanish instruction to non-native speakers. This week, we have been following our sponsor, a member of Esperanza, while she finished up her last week as a student-teacher at the Luis Muñoz Marín School.

As a quick overview, I am so thoroughly impressed by the number of bilingual students I’ve run across, some starting as young as first grade! Luis Muñoz truly is a unique school and community, as most of the students’ parents speak Spanish at home; in fact, most of the conversations before school and in-between lessons to friends are fired off in rapid Spanish.

Yet for as many people who can speak both languages fluently, there are a few who can only speak either English or Spanish. This inability to be on the same level as their peers usually results in students adopting an “I-don’t-really-care-about-school” façade, creating quite a tricky dynamic for the teachers commanding the classroom to overcome. But it doesn’t mean that underneath it all the kids don’t want to learn.

There are a couple of examples I’ve seen so far of this repeated behavior, but I’ll save that for another day. For now, I’m just content to continue taking mental notes about the lives of these young, impressively bright students! Thanks and good luck everyone! Can’t wait for week two!!

Week One - Acting & Expect Respect

This week has been crazy. I didn't really realize how much I had gotten myself into until I lived through a week of it. This past week I have done quite a lot and also realized a lot that I have left to do and fast. During my project I am continuing with teaching Acting 1 and co-directing their show that will be performed in the last week of May. Every morning this week I have showed up to help teach and run the class. Mr. L and I have been working on their scenes for their show with them and recently we gave them new scenes from the thriller Veronica's Room. The main focus this week has been on their show, Voices From the High School. The show is multiple scenes and little monologues that connect all of the scenes. We cut a couple of scenes out and based on that and our casting we had to reorganize the entire script. For the beginning of the week I focused on putting together a copy of the script in order which was actually pretty hard to do when you had a monologue and parts of two scenes all on one page that all needed to go to three different places. Then, the focus switched to blocking all of the transitions. Mr. L wasn't able to be at school a lot of the week so I had to do this all on my own and I actually found out on the spot on Wednesday. I had to throw something out there and hope it worked. In the end, in class on Wednesday I blocked all of the transitions for the first half of the show. It's pretty complicated because I set it up so there were three chairs on each side of the stage. When chairs were needed for a scene they came from those chairs. Then, I had to have different people sitting in the chairs watching scenes while people were doing scenes and some people were off stage. I thought this was the best way to do it because my class is mostly freshman and they're always very energetic and not always the best behaved. This way I only had small amounts of people off stage together and then I didn't have a lot of people on stage together for long amounts of time so they don't get bored and chat. All of the transitions new people are entering, exiting, and sitting so it is basically a giant game of musical chairs.

The other part of my project is working with Expect Respect which is a group that during the school year goes around to different schools and youth groups to teach and raise awareness about teen dating violence, abusive relationships, and bullying. I have been a part of this group for two years and this past year I have been one of the two people in charge of the Advisory Panel. I am really involved with the program and it brought me to the idea of creating a retreat that they can use for years to come starting this year. This is designed to help everyone in the program get their feet wet and get to know everyone without the labels of cast member or advisory panel and before jumping into the summer training program. Each week I will be working in the office at JFSA with Dahlia Harris on Monday and Wednesday for about 4 to 5 hours. On Monday I got my own sign in and e-mail and desk to work from. The two days I was there this week I did a lot. I created a survey for feedback from the year to help us prepare both the retreat and the training program for the summer and I sent that out to everyone. I also, sent out e-mails trying to find out who all was available for the retreat so I can plan things out accordingly. Working on the retreat, I created a generic itinerary, booked our location, and figured out our food situation because we have to keep it kosher because we are run through the JFSA.

The location I chose was the Sheep Barn that is owned by Case Western Reserve University so I also had to meet with Ginny who also works at JFSA who is an alumn so she could be our sponsor. Finally, I worked with Dahlia just on minor tasks of getting ahold of members of the group to figure out availability for upcoming performances and I also helped her work on setting things up for our callbacks that we will be having next week for the Expect Respect play.

After all that, I have really learned a lot about office work and how difficult it is to get in touch with over 30 kids and get their availability for certain dates. I also learned a lot about how well I've done over the year of gaining the respect of my students by how well they cooperated when I had to do blocking with them and by how well they treated me this week when I was left on my own to teach them. I was surprised at how much I was actually doing at JFSA and how much I was actually getting of my own and to do on my own. Next week I will hopefully be getting some video to put up from acting class.

Cooking- Week 1

We've had a long week of hard work. We started out on Monday with a basic knife skills lesson from our sponsor and a guest teacher from a local culinary school in the form of preparing a chicken stir-fry. In doing so, we learned the different techniques for cutting various food items from bell peppers to carrots to chicken. Equally importantly, we learned how to properly handle chicken so as to reduce the risk of salmonella poisoning.

The rest of the week we spent making:

-Parmesan-crusted chicken with spaghetti and a marinara sauce. This taught us how to boil water and pound chicken into thin slices. We also learned the importance of saving and reusing everything we make or don't use.

-Pizzas using the marinara sauce that we had saved from the pervious day. We made four different kinda of pizzas including Hawaiian, grilled chicken and peppers, four-cheese, and we experimented by grilling a pepperoni pizza.

-Lasagna which helped us learn how to improvise the recipe to fit the amount we want to make have fit our own taste preferences. This is helping us learn how to use our artistic license in the kitchen.

We also started the first steps to planning our benefit dinner which includes choosing the menu, reserving location, and organizing all non-food components.

-TJ Kinisky, Gadi Yungster, Ozan Cubukcu