Today we started off talking about Communication, so I started off with the game "Whisper down the lane." We sat in a big circle and I started off a sentence. When it went around 15 kids and 3 adults, the sentence came back to me as "Party in the Pervert." The sentence I started off with was "Clifford and Barney are red and purple."
We broke off into groups and Ms. Iris and Mr. Peter did an exercise where the kids critiqued some advertisements in magazines. They wrote what they liked and didn't like.
I took the kids upstairs and we learned about personal budgeting and we plotted the numbers in Excel and each kid created their own Excel sheets. Some of the ways they made money were Chinese and Vietnamese New Year, birthdays, practicing the piano and Christmas. Some of the major expenses at this age were sneakers, uniforms, candy and junk food and video games. Did you know that the Legend of Zelda still costs $50? I thought that wasn't bad because it cost the same amount when I was a kid.
At the end of the day we did a little bit of Module 5: Where to get money. I am excited about Wednesday because we are getting our first two guest speakers to come in.
Monday, August 6, 2007
Thursday, August 2, 2007
Day 10: Sick
I feel horrible today. I know we have so much to cover over the summer and I hate missing work. But I got a stomach virus and had to miss work today unfortunately.
Maybe its all the Sapporo Ichiban I've been eating from the local Asian grocery?
Maybe its all the Sapporo Ichiban I've been eating from the local Asian grocery?
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
Day 9: The Partnership Exercise
Lillian told me everything I needed to know from our first telephone call. I was looking over my notes that I took during our conversation and I should have listened to her. She said,
So today, I had them do an activity that lead to a conversation about partnership. I was very pleased with the results (the product) of the activity, but realized that the toughest part for the students was choosing a partner. Some kids wanted to have groups of 3, and I said you can only have 1 partner, so I partnered up some of the students who were left and they were visibly grumpy. I told the kids to get up and sit next to their partner and one girl sat on the steps and said "I am not getting up from this spot." I was taken aback since she is a great student and well-behaved, so I made a boy from the class go sit next to her.
Next, each pair of students had one piece of blank paper and a pencil. Their assignment was to take 4 minutes and draw a house. But the kicker was that they had to both hold the same pencil, and to make it even tougher -- they couldn't talk. All the kids stood up to the challenge. Although there were a few cheaters (kids whispering, or one child not really guiding the pencil -- just touching it) the majority of the students followed the directions.
At the end of 4 minutes I told them all to stop and hold up their houses. I was very impressed at how artistic and detailed they were. Some had house numbers and flowers on the windows. Some had big driveways and trees, a sharp contrast from the boxy rowhouses you see in this particular South Philadelphia neighborhood.
We passed around the drawings of the houses and I asked questions to the group like, "Did you feel like you were being a leader or a follower?" Most kids said a little bit of both. I asked, "How did you communicate with your partner without talking?" One child raised her hand and said "I could read her (partner's) mind." Another said, "I tried to help him and tried to tell what he would do next and pushed the pencil along."
I asked them how they felt doing the exercise and although most of them said it was fun, there were two kids who were disappointed because they did not know their partners well. I said that its really important to try and be respectful and nice to your business associates whether or not you like them because in the grown-up world, we don't choose who we work with. One pair of boys said they noticed two boys sitting close to them cheating and whispering, and I tried to relate that to business ethics, and what they would do if they were a business owner and noticed that another business owner was cheating their customers.
After the partnership exercise, I decided to test them on what they learned so far in the class and also have some fun. I chose key terms from the modules and turned it into one of my favorite bar games, Quizzo (but without the alcohol of course!) The first step was for the class to break up into groups of 4-6 students. Then each team had to make a name..... they got pretty creative! Their names were Lil' Azn Gangstaz, Da Chozen1z, Ice Cream Girls, and Gurl Power...... Sike Naw!
There were 2 rounds and each round had 10 questions in it so the perfect score they could get is 20. All teams scored above 50%. Here is an example of some of the questions I asked:
1) A person who identifies an opportunity, takes risks, and comes up with an idea and brings resources together to set up and run a venture to run a product or service is ___________. (an entrepreneur)
2) The computer program we used to create our survey spreadsheets is called ________. (Microsoft Excel)
3) The longest street in Philadelphia is ___________. (Broad Street)
4) This person created and started MySpace. _________ (Tom Anderson) -- almost EVERY TEAM got this right!
5) In business, a want backed by the willingness and ability to pay for it is called a __________. (demand) -- this one got lots of creative answers.... determination, discount shop, document, desire
I think this Business Quizzo thing went well and plan to continue it and do it for 30 minutes once a week. It actually helped with the Mr. Bones Modules as well. Today as we were going through Module 4, I told the kids "Pay attention, because I might put some of these new terms in our next Business Quizzo." The class was noticably quieter after I said that.
The kids were also excited to find out the results of the Community Survey. We found out that:
83% get around by car
50% go home with their parents after school, the rest go to the library or after-school programs
75% have a school store
87% like Anime
88% do not use their community recreation center
50% come from English-speaking households
47% speak Vietnamese at home, 43% speak Cantonese, and the rest speak other Asian languages such as Tagalog, Mandarin and Khmer. Many also speak English.
"The kids are very active and prefer physical and tactile experiences and get bored with lecture."
So today, I had them do an activity that lead to a conversation about partnership. I was very pleased with the results (the product) of the activity, but realized that the toughest part for the students was choosing a partner. Some kids wanted to have groups of 3, and I said you can only have 1 partner, so I partnered up some of the students who were left and they were visibly grumpy. I told the kids to get up and sit next to their partner and one girl sat on the steps and said "I am not getting up from this spot." I was taken aback since she is a great student and well-behaved, so I made a boy from the class go sit next to her.
Next, each pair of students had one piece of blank paper and a pencil. Their assignment was to take 4 minutes and draw a house. But the kicker was that they had to both hold the same pencil, and to make it even tougher -- they couldn't talk. All the kids stood up to the challenge. Although there were a few cheaters (kids whispering, or one child not really guiding the pencil -- just touching it) the majority of the students followed the directions.
At the end of 4 minutes I told them all to stop and hold up their houses. I was very impressed at how artistic and detailed they were. Some had house numbers and flowers on the windows. Some had big driveways and trees, a sharp contrast from the boxy rowhouses you see in this particular South Philadelphia neighborhood.
We passed around the drawings of the houses and I asked questions to the group like, "Did you feel like you were being a leader or a follower?" Most kids said a little bit of both. I asked, "How did you communicate with your partner without talking?" One child raised her hand and said "I could read her (partner's) mind." Another said, "I tried to help him and tried to tell what he would do next and pushed the pencil along."
I asked them how they felt doing the exercise and although most of them said it was fun, there were two kids who were disappointed because they did not know their partners well. I said that its really important to try and be respectful and nice to your business associates whether or not you like them because in the grown-up world, we don't choose who we work with. One pair of boys said they noticed two boys sitting close to them cheating and whispering, and I tried to relate that to business ethics, and what they would do if they were a business owner and noticed that another business owner was cheating their customers.
After the partnership exercise, I decided to test them on what they learned so far in the class and also have some fun. I chose key terms from the modules and turned it into one of my favorite bar games, Quizzo (but without the alcohol of course!) The first step was for the class to break up into groups of 4-6 students. Then each team had to make a name..... they got pretty creative! Their names were Lil' Azn Gangstaz, Da Chozen1z, Ice Cream Girls, and Gurl Power...... Sike Naw!
There were 2 rounds and each round had 10 questions in it so the perfect score they could get is 20. All teams scored above 50%. Here is an example of some of the questions I asked:
1) A person who identifies an opportunity, takes risks, and comes up with an idea and brings resources together to set up and run a venture to run a product or service is ___________. (an entrepreneur)
2) The computer program we used to create our survey spreadsheets is called ________. (Microsoft Excel)
3) The longest street in Philadelphia is ___________. (Broad Street)
4) This person created and started MySpace. _________ (Tom Anderson) -- almost EVERY TEAM got this right!
5) In business, a want backed by the willingness and ability to pay for it is called a __________. (demand) -- this one got lots of creative answers.... determination, discount shop, document, desire
I think this Business Quizzo thing went well and plan to continue it and do it for 30 minutes once a week. It actually helped with the Mr. Bones Modules as well. Today as we were going through Module 4, I told the kids "Pay attention, because I might put some of these new terms in our next Business Quizzo." The class was noticably quieter after I said that.
The kids were also excited to find out the results of the Community Survey. We found out that:
83% get around by car
50% go home with their parents after school, the rest go to the library or after-school programs
75% have a school store
87% like Anime
88% do not use their community recreation center
50% come from English-speaking households
47% speak Vietnamese at home, 43% speak Cantonese, and the rest speak other Asian languages such as Tagalog, Mandarin and Khmer. Many also speak English.
Monday, July 30, 2007
Day 8: Finding out our community needs
The digital divide is a crazy thing. I always thought it was an economic divide but today I learned that it goes deeper than that. Some parents don't want their children to have access to technology. They are afraid of technology.
About half the kids have email addresses and MySpace accounts. The rest don't have email addresses. Some said their parents don't allow them to have MySpace accounts.
So I helped the students who don't have established email accounts to start them on Gmail and then they filled out the Community Needs Survey on Survey Monkey. After they completed that, their job was to forward the survey to as many friends as possible. I am taking statistics in Grad School now, and the scientific term for that technique is called "Snowballing", which is a fast way to get participants in a desired community. You find a small sample, and they tell people they know.
Simultaneously as I had a group in the Computer Lab, Ms Iris worked with the other group downstairs on a project in Module 4 which was to take an established business and re-design their business card to make it more exciting.
About half the kids have email addresses and MySpace accounts. The rest don't have email addresses. Some said their parents don't allow them to have MySpace accounts.
So I helped the students who don't have established email accounts to start them on Gmail and then they filled out the Community Needs Survey on Survey Monkey. After they completed that, their job was to forward the survey to as many friends as possible. I am taking statistics in Grad School now, and the scientific term for that technique is called "Snowballing", which is a fast way to get participants in a desired community. You find a small sample, and they tell people they know.
Simultaneously as I had a group in the Computer Lab, Ms Iris worked with the other group downstairs on a project in Module 4 which was to take an established business and re-design their business card to make it more exciting.
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Day 7: Plotting our map
We continued Module 3 today and continued our color-coded map. We broke down the map into categories (like a mall map). Red construction paper for the Health & Beauty stores, Yellow for the restaurants and food establishments, Green for Home and Hardware, etc.
I felt like I should have planned more activities today because we got done Module 3 quickly and after the map was completed the kids were growing ancy and started running around.
I felt like I should have planned more activities today because we got done Module 3 quickly and after the map was completed the kids were growing ancy and started running around.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Day 6: Neighborhood Walk
Today might have been the best day so far at SEAMAAC. It was a warm and sunny day and the kids were excited to walk around. Before we left, we talked about the rules and how we are representing SEAMAAC. They all behaved superbly.
Every student was armed with a pencil and paper and we walked around for a few blocks and wrote down every business we saw, what they sold, their name and location. We walked into a huge Asian grocery store on 6th and Washington.... which the kids were very excited about. I was excited too, since I have never seen a grocery store like this before. The prices were surprisingly cheap as well.
A few children asked if they could buy stuff. I said "Sure, if you have money." A few girls brought some lychee candies and banana chips and were kind enough to share with the class. One boy followed me around the grocery like a little kid, and said "Ms Devalina, can you buy me this?" He was aggressive and sweet at the same time.... it was hard for me to say no. So I said "I really like your technique Anthony, I think you are gonna make a great salesman!" I bought some fruit to share with the class for being so good.
Since it took us so long at the Supermarket and we started getting stares, I decided to not to into anymore stores, just walk around. We got done a lot more, but the kids started getting hot and thirsty so we decided to turn back. One outgoing child
who is interested in opening a drug store, walked into a drug store and interviewed the owner. I was very proud of him.
When we got back to SEAMAAC, the kids drew a map of the neighborhood and we started plotting the stores on the map.
I felt like the kids had fun today and had smiles on their faces, which made me really happy.
Every student was armed with a pencil and paper and we walked around for a few blocks and wrote down every business we saw, what they sold, their name and location. We walked into a huge Asian grocery store on 6th and Washington.... which the kids were very excited about. I was excited too, since I have never seen a grocery store like this before. The prices were surprisingly cheap as well.
A few children asked if they could buy stuff. I said "Sure, if you have money." A few girls brought some lychee candies and banana chips and were kind enough to share with the class. One boy followed me around the grocery like a little kid, and said "Ms Devalina, can you buy me this?" He was aggressive and sweet at the same time.... it was hard for me to say no. So I said "I really like your technique Anthony, I think you are gonna make a great salesman!" I bought some fruit to share with the class for being so good.
Since it took us so long at the Supermarket and we started getting stares, I decided to not to into anymore stores, just walk around. We got done a lot more, but the kids started getting hot and thirsty so we decided to turn back. One outgoing child
who is interested in opening a drug store, walked into a drug store and interviewed the owner. I was very proud of him.
When we got back to SEAMAAC, the kids drew a map of the neighborhood and we started plotting the stores on the map.
I felt like the kids had fun today and had smiles on their faces, which made me really happy.
Monday, July 23, 2007
Day 5: Another Hump Day
I planned to do the neighborhood walk today, but was disappointed to walk out of my house and see how rainy, hot and humid it was. Especially depressing after such a beautiful weekend. So we stayed in and did more of Mr. Bones. I felt like the kids were losing interest more by this point and felt like I didn't have control of the group as much as I did last week. I felt like I had to do something without letting it slowly spin out of control.
So I brought out the thumb drives and had the kids present their "All About Me" presentations. They really enjoyed sharing that. But even then, its hard for them to sit and watch for a long time. A few of them wanted to work more on it, so we broke up into groups and some kids worked more on their Power Point Presentations and the rest worked on editing their business logos and store fronts.
Later that day more kids presented their business ideas and drawings.
So I brought out the thumb drives and had the kids present their "All About Me" presentations. They really enjoyed sharing that. But even then, its hard for them to sit and watch for a long time. A few of them wanted to work more on it, so we broke up into groups and some kids worked more on their Power Point Presentations and the rest worked on editing their business logos and store fronts.
Later that day more kids presented their business ideas and drawings.
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