End of Semester

I feel the progress of my senior project has been pretty successful. I don't feel stressed about what will happen in the near future. I haven't come across an issue that will set me back a couple of paces. The people that we have come in contact with have given us great input of Cesar's and my status/ progress.  The thing that I am really looking forward to is Creativity Week. During that week, Cesar and I plan to visit Whittier Elementary School to observe and interview students and teachers. The purpose of this is to get a face-to-face experience and knowledge on how "teaching" operates so that we can analyze this with Mr. Welcome Wilson who is a University of Houston board member. This summer program that Cesar and I plan to put together will be the "new" way learning/teaching. After listening to several teachers here at school, we have come to a consensus that the current "making children 'memorize' information" just doesn't quite cut it anymore. This is time for revolution in learning/teaching. The Panel Members that we plan to invite are:

Betsy Phillips- Betsy Phillips works for Chinquapin. We tend you use Betsy Phillips' occupation to our advantage. She works with advertising which we plan to ask her to help us advertise our summer program. I am hoping that she'll evaluate how creative our summer program's advertisement was.

Laura Acosta- Laura Acosta she works in HISD. She has recommended several students for us to internview. We want her to help us do research. I am hoping she'll evaluate how creative the summer program is.

Frank Duffy- Frank Duffy works for the Penny for Peace and will help us analyze the actions of students. He'll be our financial adviser. I am hoping he'll evaluate how effective our presentation is.

Dana Lipinsky- Dana Lipinsky is Cesar's mentor how is a board member. She'll help us by getting the word out to the board. She also works with communications and keeping relations with companies. She'll advise us on how to get our points across more effectively. I am hoping she'll evaluate how organized we are.

Rob Christy- Rob Christy is my mentor who is also a board member. Due to the fact that we need a board member to be a part of our panel, I wanted to ask him. I am hoping that he'll evaluate how effective our presentation was.

Molly Socha- Molly Socha is a teacher at Chinquapin who has background with programs that counsel and tutor younger children. I want her to help us with constructing our summer program and be our adviser. I want her to evaluate how well we constructed our program.

Welcome Wilson- Welcome Wilson is a board member of the University of Houston and will help us analyze the teaching/learning method of the teachers and students. He'll help us put together a outline of our observations. I am hoping he'll evaluate our overall project.

Knowing this, I feel like we are on the right track. The main thing we need to do is to stay committed and determine to make our summer program the best we can make it. Wish us luck!

Update

Last Wednesday we had our very first TED Talks. I was very nervous and intimidated by the small crowd known as the audience. The night before I was starting to stress about it and I had the worse headache but before the night was over I convinced myself that everything was going to turn out okay. I just had to believe in myself. So the next morning, the moment I woke up, nervousness slapped me across the face real hard. I told myself, "What happened to everything turning out okay?" I tried to calm my nerves but couldn't. I decided to just go out and do my best, no matter if I was nervous or not. When I first got in front of the audience I was like woah! Then, I started talking and for some odd reason I just couldn't stop. I talked for ten minutes without stopping, except to cough one time, which is something I've never been able to do. I'm not much of a person to talk constantly but when I talked about something that really mattered to me, I didn't know how to stop. In the end, I was really proud of myself and my TED Talk.

On that same day, during Susan's AP English class, she started talking about creativity week. While talking about that week, she mentioned to us that we could work on our Senior project that entire week. Once she said that, I wanted to do that because I would have a lot of freedom and time to interview with similar organizations like my summer program and talk about issues and obstacles of creating an organization such as my summer program.

Susan told me today that I needed to give her a proposal of the details of that week if I still wanted to do it. Well, I'll say right now that I really want to work on my project that week but the only problem is working out the details of the week. So, I have until Friday to write this proposal of mine. Wish me luck!!

A conversation with Molly Socha= Success

I just want to start off by saying it was an interesting and insightful discussion. Cesar and I talked to Molly because we knew that she had some background in mentoring people. We asked her about what she had done and she told us that she was a part of the Big Brother, Big Sister program, and other mentoring in college. She took part in an "adoption" of a child during a Christmas for some program where she took and talked with them, trying to better understand them. She helped give us more ideas for our project. One thing that stood out to us was that she said we should create some sort of summer camp where Chinquapin students will mentor the students while they had class. The classes would range from arts to English.

Cesar's Website

Since Cesar and I are working together, we thought it would be best if we added each others website onto our own. So on the top left corner there is Cesar's url. I think you will get a better understanding if you look at both of our sites.

Contacts

Well I only have about one minute to blog so here goes nothing. Cesar and I have several people we are going to contact. We will contact Kathy Heinzerling, possibly Molly Sosha, Tracye Anderson, Lorian Welsh, and a tutor that Susan will hopefully connect us with. This will be interesting.

Narrowed Down

I think I've pretty much narrowed down my project. It wasn't easy but with the help of some people I did it. I want to create a Chinquapin summer program where students will volunteer to tutor and counsel other kids throughout the U.S. It will be like a Big Brother, Big Sister program for where the Chinquapin students will be the "Big Brothers/Sisters. After talking to Lorena about my project, she informed me that Kathy Heinzerling was one of the main people who coordinated Breakthough and that I should talk to her about giving me advice on where to start on this project.

Status of Research

Well so far things are going pretty good. I've conducted research on several programs that I will try to come into contact with. I will ask for advise on our to conduct and control my project. What I have in mind so far is that I want to incorporate this project with our school. I realize that we already have some kind of tutoring program during the school year but I was thinking about having a summer program where our fellow Chinquapinians would volunteer to tutor and counsel other students. I want it to be a kind of Big Brother, Big Sister program. I've looked into their website http://www.bbbsfl.org/ and found out that their volunteers "must live or work in Hillsborough, Polk, or Pasco County." I know that there are many people who are willing to volunteer for this program but are unable to due to the fact that they are not members of Hillsborough, Polk or Pasco County. I don't like that there are restrictions on volunteering for this program so I would like to expand my summer program for anyone who would like to help once it's functioning properly. http://www.childrensboard.org/ and http://www.americaspromise.org/ are other websites that help me in this developing program. They act as a sort of boundary for what my program should include and what it shouldn't have. They are other organizations that I hope to come into contact with. Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson is a book that was requested to me that I plan to read. I already found a website that gives me 299 of the 332 pages so I am extremely thankful that I found this site. http://books.google.com/books?id=HbezCyqr3q0C&printsec=frontcover&dq=three+cups+of+tea&source=bl&ots=mW3GMf1vfU&sig=boh_bkMuDu89f4WgOGMwZ6dMt3w&hl=en&ei=WxO8TKL5LsGclgfBo_WZDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CFUQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q&f=false this is the site if anyone would like to read it. It is about Greg Mortenson's journey to build schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan where they are failing many students to recruit them into madrassas. It describes his difficulties and struggles in these dangerous parts of these countries. After I read this book I hope to have a better understanding of what it is like to create this program. I also hope to become even more inspired for creating this program.

One Word: Inspirational

Well as you can tell from the title, this TED talk by Dave Eggers is very inspiring to me. This video to me was the ideal inspiration I needed to conduct my project. I like this idea of "one-on-one attention." I have realized that there are a lot of people who need tutoring and this "one-on-one attention" may be a problem. If I can create this community service project that Susan has brought to my attention, then the "one-on-one attention" will probable be successful. Well going back to the TED talk, it talks about how Dave Eggers and his companions had trouble bringing in the kids to tutor because of "trust issues." I didn't take into account about "trust issues" prior to watching this video but now it has made me think of ways to create a child-friendly area. Does anyone have any thoughts of how to do this?
Another reason why this TED talk is inspirational is because if the factual truth it has in it. Dave Eggers has the right thinking and is trying to spread his thinking to anyone who is willing to absorb the truth. He says that the children do not realize how good they are and how smart they are. They need people to tell them how and show them how things are done, listen to them and guide them to a better education. He says that we "can shine that light on them one human interaction at a time"

Dave Eggers' wish: Once Upon a School

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A Tutoring Partnership

I initially wanted to create a facility where disadvantaged children could come to get tutored and counseled. Now, Susan has brought to my attention that creating a facility would be a different path to this project. It would seem as if my focus was creating the facility so instead I am going to find a way to make a partnership with an existing organization. I'm thinking about making this partnership with a high school. I'm not quite sure which high school exactly but I am going to narrow it down to a high school that I believe is in major need of guidance academically and emotionally. I realize that it is difficult to concentrate on anything if you are stressing. While I was attending public schools I was exposed to an extreme lack of care from the teachers compared to Chinquapin. I realize that life here at Chinquapin is a lot easier because we are have a great bond with the teachers. Because of this bond, we are guided in to academic and emotional relief, in some sense. I want other students who are willing to give it their all to have the same benefits.