HeadsUP DC with Blue Crew 3

Yesterday I referred to the Point as my place of residence one month ago. Truth be told, it has only been a week, but so much has happened that a month could have gone by.

We started off with our Orientation with the youth participating in the Mayor's Summer of Service program (MSOS), a program designed by the Mayor of DC that is coordinated by the organization known as Serve DC. This initiative is giving hundreds of 14-21 year old residents of DC jobs this summer, and our program, MSOS, is working with 100 of those youth who are all in the 16-17 year old age range. The key difference in our program is that these youth will be doing service in the areas of environment and education, and for many, this will be their first experience in the world of service-learning.

The Orientation ran on Monday, where we met all of the participants and revealed the teams. Lili, my co-crew leader, and I have a crew of 9 participants, and we began work with them on Tuesday at our site.

For the summer, our crew (Blue Crew 3) will working at Amidon-Bowen Elementary School. A program known as HeadsUP DC tutors elementary age students here, and our crew will be some of those tutors. Each day has a well-planned schedule that includes lessons in Math, Reading, Service-learning, Clubs, snack-time, and independent reading time. Our participants learned this week which classroom and children they would be assigned to. The objective is to help keep the kids engaged and help them in any way they can throughout the day.


As for Lily and me? We'll be teacher liaisons, working alongside the site director, helping where help is needed, and most importantly, supervising our participants daily. We've got quite a crew, and a large one at that. Many of these folks have never worked with kids, which is a challenge I foresaw coming into this...

...However, there was one day this week where the crew supervised kids at a nearby Recreation Center, and watching them play with and look after the kids like naturals proved to me that this is going to an amazing experience, not just for them, but for the kids they'll be helping.


I'm already gearing up for the waterworks in 9 weeks...

Farewell to the King of Pop

News travels fast. All of us were sitting in the cafeteria discussing dinner plans when we received a news update via someone's phone that Michael Jackson passed away.

Just like everyone else, we were surprised. I'm sure we'll hear more as the days go by on what happened... but in any case, this entry is dedicated to him. We honored him on our way to dinner by playing his greatest hits. NCCC bids you farewell, MJ.

DC Housing Elementary

We're in DC. Housing has been settled -- We're currently staying at an old elementary school. 25 people and we've got the entire place to ourselves. It's been quite a couple of days, adjusting to our new situation, figuring out the schedule, and understanding what would be open to us (there is a Recreation Center across the field).


I never thought I'd have a classroom or staff lounge as my bedroom, but that's the case. We're all adjusting to a very unique way of life and I look forward to expanding on it as time goes by.

As far as our status - We're all fairly tired, and it is the weekend, so we'll be recharging for what it sure to be a challenging, eventful, and very exciting summer that all starts this upcoming week. I'll have more updates on the past couple of days, and of course, the first week... next week.

SHUFFLE!

Surprise! The three Badger teams heading to DC have been shuffled and we are now on new teams for this project to mix things up a bit. I'm now on the Blue team (out of Red, White, and Blue), made up of 7 members and a new TL. See below! You'll notice that Harper, Doug, and I are still together on the same team, having joined up with members of Badger 1 and Badger 5.


It should be interesting... I don't anticipate too much changing since all of us are heading to DC and living together. But I'm interested to see how it will be with a shuffle round of sorts where our Badger 6 members are on different teams.

DC Summer of Service Training

So with our last project now fully wrapped up we began our training for Summer of Service. 4 days of team building, workshops on adolescent development, and program basics, including a great presenter named Craig Bowman, who had spoken with us at the beginning of the year as well. Very engaging, and relevant to what we'll be doing during our two months in D.C.

This morning our teams visited various houses in the village where we encountered different scenarios, where staff and TLs acted out potential conflicts as 16-17 year old crew members, and each of us was to manage a situation. It ended up being really beneficial, giving us a dose of what we might expect during SOS.

And now we're off! In about an hour the 26 of us will be driving and moving to DC for a little over two months. More on our living situation and the orientation to come once we're settled, living somewhere, and able to find/connect to wi-fi (crosses fingers).

Here we go!

HonFest 09

You may have heard of the “beehive”. You may have had it way back when, especially if you lived in or around Baltimore. Well, we’ve found that it makes an annual comeback at HonFest.


About half of the team volunteered for HonFest 2009 this past Saturday. The festival has been happening every year since 1994, and I’m happy to have discovered and enjoyed it 15 years later.

The web site sums it up well: “HonFest is a local tradition. The Bawlmer term of endearment, Hon, short for Honey, embodies the warmth and affection bestowed upon our neighbors and visitors alike by historic working-women of Baltimore. HonFest is an annual celebration in honor of these women.”

What originally started as a small tradition at Café Hon turned into a big event where many a vendors set up along 4 blocks and two stages showcase local bands and performers. There is even a “Glamour Lounge”, where visitors can get their own beehives for the day (See Colleen and Chloe below with Doug).

It was a long day – We worked in various locations, directing vehicles, staffing the volunteer booth, and the HonFest info booth, also known as the “Honformation” booth. I staffed the HB all day from 2 – 10pm, and it was unexpectedly one of the most interesting and enjoyable volunteer opportunities I’ve come to so far. Some big factors included people-watching, taking some great photos, and being stationed right in the middle of the festival, with front row seats to the Elvis impersonator.

Speaking of impersonators, the rest of Badger 6 visited us and our own Doug was stopped for photos several times. Funny thing is… he always dresses that way.


All in all, it was quite a day: great staff, good music, entertaining people, and a photo album to keep it all in memory. Who knows, maybe I’ll be able to stop by again next year. Until then, I’ll be working on perfecting my beehive.


(Just kidding)

…

(It’s already perfect)

Later, hon!

Happenin' at the Point

So last weekend we had over 800 visitors to the Point for a Native American Veterans festival. I'm still not sure of the technical name of it so don't quote me, but it was interesting to have such a crowd on what is typically a quiet area that we have unofficially taken ownership of. There were some great performers who seemed to keep going all day (and night, as the drums drummed throughout the night) and a few of us meandered across the lawn to catch a peek:

Baltimore Museum of Industry

Great museum - Check out some photos in my album from May 24 - June 6th. I never realized how much originated in Baltimore. Badger 6 made a visit and was able to enjoy some service-learning after work this past week, and it was nice to be able to see the evolution of so many different industries of products, cars, signs, paint, and more. I think what really interested me was the old-school advertising -- big difference from today.

Click the link and click to page 8... photos from the museum begin there: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2081789&id=13000637&l=6442db0111

Parks and People Reflection

I love the skin I’m in. I think I can appreciate trees and plants so much more now that I’ve come to understand what its like to have parasites living off of you. Vegetation doesn’t have it easy, and it takes a good amount of resilience to thrive and continue to grow, as we’ve noticed throughout this project.

Little did I know that these plants, very much like their human neighbors, go through their share of daily hardships and obstacles, like Japanese Honeysuckle and English Ivy, which wrap their hostile loins around tree bark in attempts to keep the poor guys down. Fortunately for them, we as humans can relate, and are more than happy to swoop in and stop those invasive species at the root of the problem, or in the case, the actual root itself.

Racking up quantifiable numbers and pushing toward the mission of achieving 40% tree canopy in Baltimore was very apparent in our work each day, and knowing that saving these trees, planting new ones, maintaining existing ones, and clearing the trails alongside of them, had made this an experience well worth it, and in turn, brought us a lot closer to our photosynthesized friends.

In the end, I think I’ve won out over the ticks and poison ivy that have attempted to take over my outer layer. I’ve become one with nature in this sense, but in all sincerity, I’ve had the opportunity to be a part of an environmental project and learn so much more than I did before about the importance of tree canopy in an urban environment. Next time I pass by an Oak, I look forward to the moment we’ll share with one another.

A new green friend.

Badger 6 has recently gotten a lot closer with nature. After detailed education and advise, somehow a majority of the team has had a run-in with poison-ivy, and it has certainly left its mark. Several, in fact.

Poison Ivy can be identified as a three-leaf plant that can grow close to the ground, and in many cases in tends to take the form of hairy vines around tree trunks. Depending on the stage of growth, the leaves may have a reddish tint and are typically shiny and sometimes notched (and sometimes not).

Visitors at the Point

We found this beast of a turtle in the village the other day, right in the middle of the street by the river. Looks friendly, eh? Since it has only been our team here at the Point, wildlife seems to have come out more often, most likely because there aren't so many of us taking up space. We've got several families of groundhogs living underneath our houses and in the fields as well. I'll have to grab a picture/video of them at some point.

The two other teams heading to DC with us next week have just arrived back at the Point from their respective projects in Vermont and Georgia. This upcoming week will be full of training for the project to come.

Much more soon...

Trees of Green

Baltimore has really surprised all of us. We came into this expecting the typical urban environment, which in my mind included overlapping roads, tall buildings, fast-paced stores and shops, heavy pedestrian traffic, and your normal daily traffic in general. What we didn’t expect was to find a city that was rich in green parks, trails, and vegetation that, although limited, was growing quickly and becoming such an essential part of the Baltimore community.

It’s been rewarding knowing that Badger Six has been able to contribute to this mission of growth, and we’ve tallied up some numbers in our work:

•350 plugs planted
•5000 plants potted and weeded
•600 lbs. trash collected
•120 lbs of recycling collected
•6 truck loads of mulch transported
•65 trees planted
•1 rain garden created
•817 trees stripped of English Ivy
•3300lbs. invasive species collected
•1600 trees maintained
•3.5 miles of Jones Falls Trail maintained
•Maintained 9 urban tree plots
•Leveraged 162 volunteers
•18 rain barrels created

Our final day was a few days ago, and I’m happy to say we’ve gotten things done, added a lot more green to Baltimore, and a bit more tan to our image.