Mixed nuts

There are quite a few things I've been meaning to blog about but haven't had the energy to devote a full post to. I'm enjoying a lazy Sunday so I thought it would be a good time to tackle all the leftover stuff I have floating around in my head.

Check out the blogs of two of my teammates! Clarissa and Elizabeth have both been writing pretty regularly and might have some different perspectives on what our team has been doing. They're also both really cool so you should check out their photos and what they have to say.

Our project at the school is still going well. A few major things have happened since my last post though. First of all we found out that Larchmont (our school) is closing at the end of this year. There are a bunch of school board politics that seem to have impacted the decision but it basically comes down to the fact that the district is having serious financial problems. It's sad that a school with so much history and community support has to close and that the kids and teachers will all be split up. We were also hoping to do some work on their community garden but there doesn't seem to be much point anymore. For now we're hoping to make as much of a positive impact as we can during this project and then hope for the best when the students get split up into different schools.
We also had a scary moment last week when the school went on lockdown because of a shooting a few blocks away. The shooting was gang related and it really brought home the type of environment the kids are growing up in. They seemed pretty unruffled by the whole thing which either means the teachers did a great job of keeping them calm or they're just used to things like that happening.
I really enjoy working with the kids in the classroom and after school as well as talking to them at recces and around school. At times the school environment can be difficult because so much of it is dealing with behavior problems and treating the kids as a a group rather than individuals. I know so many of them would benefit from individual attention and need specialized services but it's just not possible to work one-on-one with all of them. I wish there was an agency like Family and Community Services at DePaul to do school-based and family counseling but there's no access to that type of thing in our area. I'm trying my best to give the students positive reinforcement and talk to them about how they're feeling each day, which I can tell makes them feel special and motivated to do well. They really are great and never fail to brighten up my day.

A lot of our weekends off are spent doing some sort of ISP (Independent Service Project). ISPs can be any community service that isn't related to our current project and we have to have a total of 80 ISP hours by the end of the program. So far some teammates and I have done things like set up, serve, and clean at a benefit dinner and worked at the Salvation Army to help low-income families apply to get Christmas presents for their kids. ISPs are a nice change of pace and a chance for us to get to know our community a bit better. I've really enjoyed the ones we've done so far and am looking forward to planning and doing more.

I definitely have more to say but as usual I'm running out of energy for writing and will have to pick back up another day.

As always, thanks for reading!