A Little Help From Friends - A Lot of FUN

Greetings Everyone!!!

I hope everyone is staying healthy and well. A TON of exciting things have happened since I last posted.

At St. Gabriel’s we just had two really great weeks! Why? Well last week, out of the whole time, there was a remarkable occurrence in regards to behavior. THERE WERE ONLY TWO CARD FLIPS THE ENTIRE WEEK! I cannot stress how absolutely amazing this was for us. As Nina mentioned in her post, this was mainly because of the enormous presence of volunteers that we were equipped with. The children did not mess around as much with so much individual attention per kid. On that note, the extra volunteers not just helped keep things under control but also enabled the kids to have personalized help with math, reading, journal writing, etc. On Wednesday of last week we also had some special assistance from one of our very own Robertson friends! Nina thanked our fellow Robertson Scholar Hilary Henry (pictured above), in her last post for coming in and helping us. Hilary, who works for Luther Brown at the Delta Center for Culture and Learning, has been learning volumes of information about the Mississippi Delta as part of her Robertson summer experience. We could not think of anyone better to come in and teach the children about their hometown of Mound Bayou since Founder’s Day (the annual celebration of Mound Bayou’s beginnings) took place on July 12th. I felt pretty lucky to be Hilary’s assistant the whole day and watch her in action. With the 10-13 year olds, Hilary gave them a short passage to read about the history of Mound Bayou and how it was founded. They then proceeded to break up into groups and make a skit about what they learned. Ha ha, it sure was entertaining! Next with the 8-9 year olds, Hilary had a very creative activity planned. She typed a children’s book titled, “The Story of Mound Bayou” and had it illustrated by the kids. Each child got to draw a picture for a page of the book. After it was assembled all together, Hilary read the story to the kids and asked them questions about the book. They seemed to learn a lot from this activity. The final product was something they were proud of as well. Finally with the 5-7 year olds, Hilary proceeded to read the book the 8-9 year olds had illustrated to teach the kids about Mound Bayou. She then gave the kids prearranged square sheets of cloth for each kid to decorate. The sheets were labeled with significant landmarks and people from Mound Bayou’s past such as the Taborian Hospital and Isaiah T. Montgomery. After the kids finished illustrating them with markers, we all gathered around in a circle to share them. Hilary is sewing all the cloth into a blanket to be displayed in the classroom. We are so grateful that Hilary came to spend the day with us last Wednesday. It was a wonderful experience for everyone.

The children all seemed to like Hilary as well. Many quickly warmed up to her by giving her hugs. What was most peculiar however was the prevailing notion amongst the kids that Hilary was Nina’s sister! Both Josh and Nina are among the few white people these kids have ever seen. Growing up in Mound Bayou their whole lives, it seemed logical to these kids that Nina and Hilary were related in some capacity.
This past week was also fantastic. There was no help for us this week, but things still seemed to fly by. We had a week-long theme of nutrition and health for the summer youth program. This “Wellness Week” was full of all kinds of activities geared around educating the kids about living healthy lifestyles. What we taught our kids this week ranks on par in importance compared with all math and reading we’ve done thus far. For example, soda pop is an unquestionable staple in the diets of many of the kids. Most of the food in the South is deep fried and extremely oily too. So Diabetes and other problem related to obesity have made huge negative impact in this region. High sugar and fat diets tend to have obvious ripple effects for health too such as poor dental hygiene. Nina, Josh, and I decided we could not ignore such a serious issue for these children. For our “Word of the Day” we chose words such as hygiene to start the week off and decay to end the week. Our normal reading comprehension worksheets/activities were specifically designed to be on topics pertinent to health (thus we got a two for one deal here). We touched upon science by learning about proteins and the food guide pyramid. We had the kids do an exercise where they had to study the nutrition facts of the two of the snacks we provide them at our summer youth program (Peanut Butter Crackers vs. Fruit Snacks). The 5-7 year olds watched a movie too we got from the library titled, “Going to the Doctors.”Nina read to them the classic Stone Soup by Ann McGovern and did fun games with them about food. On Wednesday, we had our second Robertson Scholar guest lecturer in the form of Kenneth Barshop (pictured above). Kenneth has been interning with Dr. Steven Clark for his Robertson summer in Mississippi. He has gained a lot of clinical experience this summer and learned a ton about Diabetes. We were super pumped to have him on board to come and teach the kids about staying healthy! Kenneth came to St. Gabriel’s with a well-prepared lesson plan. He set up and got right in helping kids with their journals. Funny, during journal time many kids asked me if Kenneth was Josh’s brother! Ha ha, I guess I should have seen that one coming. After helping the kids during journal time, he proceeded to take the 10-13 year olds for their activity. Kenneth distributed booklets relating to health and wellness to the kids and had them study them. He followed up with dividing the kids into teams and conducting a creative game of Jeopardy. Josh was on standby to help Kenneth with controlling the kids. But I hear things went very smoothly. Kenneth tried a similar activity with the middle kids. Yet he noticed they really seemed to absorb the material better when he went over it with them out loud. That was a hit of course since they love competing against one another (and they get a lot of that with Josh’s multiplication drills/games). With the youngest kids, Kenneth taught them about the food pyramid through a worksheet. Nina had done a creative food grouping exercise the day before, so the children were all exposed to the concept before which was nice. Thursday was the day for dental hygiene. My thanks goes out to Dr. Ragunanthan, Cindi Miller, Brandy Imes, and the rest of his staff for their help sending me the materials I needed to conduct a solid lesson on dental hygiene. THANK YOU! They sent me three packages of stuff including pamphlets (on gum disease, tobacco, smoking), books, and a toy stuffed animal dragon with teeth. With the 8-9 year olds and the 10-13 year olds I did same activity. I created a dental hygiene study sheet titled, “Braveen’s Guide to Healthy Teeth” with information on teeth anatomy, how to care for one’s teeth, problems associated with poor hygiene, and finally foods to eat and avoid. I went over the guide with them and had a discussion over the contents. After seeing how much the kids loved Jeopardy with Kenneth, I decided to give that a shot too with teeth. Nina made all the questions for me off of the study guide. Jeopardy was a hit, and I feel that they all learned a lot too. I noticed some kids were pretty upset when they lost. I stressed to them that the take home message was rather to simply brush + floss properly twice a day. Hopefully they’ll listen. I know a lot of kids already have some pretty bad teeth. Things will only get worse if their habits don’t change. Next up with the youngest kids, Josh and I gathered all the kids around a table and got them ready to read. I read a book to them from the American Dental Association about Dudley the Dinosaur. We talked to the kids about the lessons in the book and the importance of brushing their teeth. Then we showed them “Mr. Chomper.” He was the toy dragon with life-like human teeth. The kids took turns touching and petting “Mr. Chomper.” I gave them a demonstration on how to brush teeth on “Mr. Chomper’s” teeth after that.

Aside from that we have been nicely wrapping up with our specialized lessons at St. Gabriel’s. Nina has finished the Wayside essays and has started short stories with them. Josh has finished his huge seminar on the Russian Revolution. Now he has written a script for them to perform in the presentation to the parents on the last day of the program. I have been finishing up Karate, and on Wednesday we practiced what we will be performing in the presentation.

Now outside of all our work, we’ve been keeping quite busy as well. Last Wednesday was our big community dinner Luther Brown organized for us and all of our mentors. It was a huge community gathering and a lot of people attended. Mr. Scott Coopwood, who publishes the Delta Business Journal, Delta Magazine, and the Cleveland Current newspaper, among other businesses, hosted the event. An article appeared highlighting the Robertson Scholars then appeared in the paper the following Sunday. On Thursday we all went to Po’Monkey’s again. This was my second time going after initially visiting on Day 1! I danced next to some dude with killer moves. He was a little drunk but took a liking to me and gave me his hat as he left. The next day Nina, Josh, Hilary, and I all went to visit our fellow Robertson Scholars working at the Sunflower County Freedom Project. Our Robertson friends Erin Convery, Alison Kibbe, Matt Clayton, and Kimi Goffe are doing some incredible work with the summer school program they are running there. The age range for the kids at the SCFP is older than ours – all children are either going to 7th, 8th, or 9th grade. In addition to that the number of kids is smaller than the Summer Youth Program at St. Gabriel’s. They have full day long classes too in what is essentially a rigorous summer school that also has fun activities mixed in. Nina, Josh, Hilary, and I served as a college panel when we got there and answered questions about Duke and college in general for the kids. I was honored that they asked me to teach Karate for the kids for a little bit after that. We concluded the day by watching the kids battle each other in some “Math Wars.” HILARIOUS!!! For more information about the Sunflower County Freedom Project, visit their website: http://www.sunflowerfreedom.org/

Later Friday night, Nina and I cooked some Indian food that my mom sent us in through the mail earlier that week. Chappathi with Mattar Paneer was a big hit with all of our friends. Hilary also made a really delicious chocolate chip cake-type dessert. The following day Lee Aylward took us to Memphis for our final guided tour. It was an awesome trip. We visited Graceland, Stax Museum of American Soul Music, and the National Civil Rights Musuem. All three locations were REALLY fascinating. Our Robertson friend Michael Bernert coined it best at Stax when he said, “Being at Stax especially after living in the Delta really gave me an understanding of American music and in a larger way, an understanding of what it means to be an American.” Everything all comes back to the Mississippi Delta I’ve realized. My favorite was the Civil Rights Museum. It gave me chills to see where Martin Luther King died. The museum was really a neat place with so much information. I wish I had more time to go through it in greater detail. Later that night some of us got together at the apartment to watch The Shining. I don’t know how I slept that night. It was a pretty scary movie! On Sunday was Founder’s Day in Mound Bayou and Michael, Josh, Nina, and I went to check out the gravesite ceremony at Isaiah Montgomery’s grave. Unfortunately I did not bring my camera with me to take pictures. Funny thing though, apparently there was a TV camera set up that got us on television. The next day a lot of people, including our kids, told us that they saw us on TV!!

-Braveen