Mayor Nutter

During lunch on Friday Mayor Nutter addressed all of the Gates Millennium Scholars that were part of this year’s Alternative Spring Break.   I was seated near the podium where the mayor was going to speak from.  When I was making my way back to my seat we sort of made eye contact and he interpret it as if I was making my way towards him, to speak to him or shake his hand.  Glad that to have the sudden chance to speak to the mayor whom I actually admire ( lol)… I scurried through my mind in order to find a “topic” to talk to the mayor about. 

A day before that he had presented the new city budget and you I could definitely tell that defending/presenting the new budget had taken a toll on his “spiritual strength”. 

Fourth Day of Community Service

On the fourth day of community service we went to the People’s Emergency Center (PEC) and to an affiliated organization with PEC called Children’s Safe Harbor (CSH).  These are PHENOMENAL organizations.  The PEC website is:  http://www.pec-cares.org/

And the Children’s Safe Harbor (CSH) is:  http://childrenssafeharborinc.org/

The PEC helps homeless people get back on their feet.  They feed and train people so that they can eventually fend for themselves and maybe even be homeowners, someday.  The children’s safe harbor specializes in helping formally abused children.  Both are phenomenal organizations.  I just cannot stop saying that.

Our task was to evaluate the efficiency of a program in the CSH.  The program was a computer class.  We interviewed both members of the staff that implemented the program and participants of the program (which were all women).  We asked questions like:  What do you like about the program?  What do you think could be worked on?  What do you think needs to be added to make this program work even better for you?  Why?  Etc.  But for me… the most important question was the last question.  Has this program helped you be more involved in your child’s schooling?  Any change before and now during your participation in the program?  I was surprised to hear how being computer literate had helped the women feel more “sure of themselves” and with enough confidence to check their children’s homework.  Through the program they had learned some English and had learned how to navigate the internet and Microsoft ( and other software) that gave them the skills to give their input in their children’s school work.

I was very move by this experience.  I just can’t believe how efficiently run these organizations were.  And how noble were the goals that they set out to do.  It’s very moving…

WEB Du Bois (Dr. William Edward Burghardt Du Bois) and Upenn

As a graduate assistant working for the admissions office, one of my tasks is to give tours to prospective/accepted students who request it.  The Upenn campus is not as big as I thought that it was going to be.   Nonetheless, my tours only cover parts of the campus.  Since, the tours are often limited to thirty minutes I basically give students thirty minutes worth of the campus.  This, I think limits both the visiting student’s scope of the entirety of the Upenn campus and my own as well (since I don’t have to learn about any other buildings on campus other than the ones that I cover during my tour).  Hence, I am ignorant to the history and location of many other buildings on campus, including the WEB Du Bois College House here on campus. 

All of the students and staff involved with ASB came to Upenn for dinner today ( Wednesday March 7^th).   The dinner was held in the Wharton Building which I was familiar with, because of its proximity to the Graduate School of Education.  Nonetheless, after the dinner we were supposed to go to the WEB Du Bois house, which I was completely unaware of.  I didn’t know that it existed.  Since, I was a student from Upenn people were expecting me to know where it was at and I just didn’t know.  It was quite embarrassing…

Of course!  As soon as I was able to get a hold of a computer I researched the house and its history.  I will not go over all of the history but it is definitely worth reading.  Here is the link:  http://dubois.house.upenn.edu/house_history.html  It is a housing building open to all and has a strong history of catering to African American issues.  Even today, “the House continues to be a center for Black scholars searching diligently for an African identity and perspective within a historically White institution of higher learning.” Again, I highly recommend the one page brief history of the house. 

As if this wasn’t enough… I also found out that WEB Du Bois was just (Mid February of 2012) given a posthumous recognition as an honorary Emeritus Professor of Sociology and African American Studies.  In 1896, WEB Du Bois was hired to be an assistant lecturer here at the University of Pennsylvania.  Because of the “times” he wasn’t given a full professorship.  At the end, this most recent recognition of WEB Du Bois as a professor Emeritus serves more as an award to the University than to the late WEB Du Bois. 

Read more about it here:  http://www.upenn.edu/pennnews/news/penn-conference-mark-honorary-emeritus-professorship-sociology-and-africana-studies-web-du-bois

Second Day of Community Service

Today we are going to Aspira charter school… I believe that it’s in North Philly.  Here is their website:  http://www.aspiracyber.org/Bilingual-Model.31.0.html

This school is special in the way that it chose to empower its students.  It is located in a predominantly latino community (Puerto Rican and Dominican communities).  It teaches half of its curriculum in Spanish and half of its curriculum in English.  It’s aim is to create bi-cultural, bilingual, biliterate students.  It is a fairly new school (four or five years old) so it’s academic effect cannot be readily measured yet.  Nonetheless, its social effect can definitely be seen by just talking to the students.  The students are very aware of their community and  how special it is to speak two languages with perfect fluency.  In turn, this empowers them.  They know who they are and what they want to keep ( as in language and heritage) throughout their life.  I think that this is phenomenal.  All throughout the United States, there are various campaigns to erase the “Spanish language from the children” to give the children only English, to basically steal a very strong component to “who they are” from them.  It is cultural genocide and it’s happening everywhere.  This is what makes this charter school special.  It’s trying to help the kids keep a very strong component to their family’s identity.

In this school, our job was to help set up a “lending” library.  At the moment, the school only had a room full of books where the students could sit down and read the books in the room but never take them home.  Our job was to classify every single book as fiction, nonfiction, chapter book etc.  bind them, assign them a code and enter them into the database and then shelve them.  It took two days and two teams to do this.  It was a tedious job but very rewarding.  We also got to meet the students and talk to some of their teachers.  To me this was a very powerful experience.  There was a very good quote at the entrance to the library that said “It is easier to build strong children than to repair a broken man” by Frederick Douglass.  And I couldn’t help but compare both the youth build students who had been drop outs to the much younger students in this charter school.   Was Youth build “repairing” their students enough in their one year there?  And is the Aspira charter school, and other schools like it, “building” strong enough children that will overcome all of the obstacles in their communities?

First Day of Community Service!

We were divided into four teams.  Each of the team had about 15 students.  There is the blue, red, orange and green team.  I am in the Green Team J. Our first community service site is a charter school in Philadelphia called Youth Build.  Their website is:  www.youthbuildphilly.org

In the school’s own terms:  “Youth build Philadelphia Charter School provides out-of-school youth in Philadelphia with the broadest range of tools, supports and opportunities to become self-sufficient, responsible, contributing members and leaders in their community.”  And they achieve this by combining both academically rigorous coursework as well as real “in the field” work training in fields like nursing, truck driving, home building/repair, computers and so forth.  It’s a demanding one year program that requires a lot from the students.  They begin with thousands of applicants.  Out of that pool they invite 500 students to come to the school and meet the staff.  During that time, the program is introduced to the prospective students.  What it consists of?  What it requires of them?  What types of services are available?  And during this time as well, the students are expected to be highly discipline to the point that if they ever arrive late to the introductory meeting they are disqualified from participating.  A folder with different options (other than youthbuild) is given to them and they are asked to leave.  At the end, out of the 500 students invited to visit the school about 300 are accepted and they are the new youthbuild cohort.  Though it’s a grueling process,  the program is definitely worth the hype.  The staff there visibly love their job and wholeheartedly believe in and execute the mission of the school and in the kids that they admit. 

We were there from 8 to 4:00pm.  And what we basically did was facilitate two different groups of students.  During each session we basically went through “how to conduct yourself during an interview” and “how to answer certain questions”.  I know that everyone has some interview skills and I think that everyone “on a good day” can “wing” any interview.  Nonetheless, practice is important.  I let the groups of students that I worked with know this.  I also let them know my experience with interviews (which has not always been amazing).  This way we all started like “on the same page”.  Once the students knew that we were “both” practicing and helping each other through this learning process then they were more receptive to my feedback.  It was a really good experience.  I had never step foot in a charter school before this.  I’m glad that this was my first experience with charter schools.  J

Alternative Spring Break Gitters

Today is the first day of my “Gates Millennium Scholar Alternative Spring Break”!  I am definitely not done with all of my packing.  Since, I haven’t received any type of schedule for what exactly is going to happen during this “community service alternative Spring Break”… I don’t exactly know what kind of clothes to pack for the upcoming week.  My best guess is that jeans and nice shirts will do it.  J

I’m so excited to get started!  Basically, the Alternative Spring Break (ASB) is a week of community service here in the city of Philadelphia.  Sixty people were chosen for the ASB.  I don’t know how many applied but the application process consisted of two or three essays (can’t quite remember) in response to two or three prompt questions given by the people who I guess were going to read our essays and select the people from there.  You also had to submit a resume and then hope for the best!  Lol  

I am intimidated by the fact that I don’t exactly know what type of community service we are going to do.  I AM known for misplacing key information about events and my email account does have an infamous reputation for sending everything important to "spam"... Maybe, I just missed the information somehow... (highly likely)  I know that it will have to do with education and library science but not knowing the exact services sort of worries me.  I really don’t want to be outside.  I don’t like the cold.  I am also not the strongest person in the block so if any constant heavy lifting is required then O.M.G.  But whatever, I’ll do whatever is asked of me.  It’s just for a week so how bad can it be?  J 

I can’t wait to meet my roommate!  All of the GMS events that I’ve been part of have been great.  Actually, I’ve only gone to one other GMS event.  But that’s enough to know that whatever is GMS related will be great (and fun)!  Allright!  I’m going to finish packing now.  Peace!