Location: Barry Elementary School
Date: Saturday, January 19, 2013; 7:30 am - 1:30 pm
"Everyone can be great because everyone can serve." Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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| The School |
There was barely any light
outside when I started for Barry Elementary School. I took a cab there and arrived just before my
reporting time of 7:30 am. I knocked on
the door and was let in by Christine, who was to be managing all of the Volunteer
Leaders. She was sorting through the
inventory of supplies that had been dropped off by Chicago Cares staff, most
probably Rich, earlier in the week. As I
started looking at my inventory list, other volunteer leaders started arriving; Monika who was to lead one of the painting projects, John who was going to lead
another and Marika, who was going to lead the kids Olympics. I had met John at one of the
Job Coaching
projects at ODS and had found him to be a committed volunteer. Monika had done major projects with Chicago
Cares such this this one the previous year as well as Serve-a-thon. Marika, who is athletic, looked like the perfect candidate to
lead the Olympics effort. We had managed
to assemble a really good team, though there was lot of work still to be done.
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| Life lessons |
Christine said that the buses carrying the Target volunteers would be arriving by 9 am. This gave us about an hour to get
set-up. John and Monika left with the
painting supplies for the annex building where the painting project was to be done, and
Marika started preparing the basketball court for the Olympics events. I had the entire long hallway in which I was
to conduct the Science Fair. First order
of business was to get a separate table as a station for each
experiment/activity. I asked one of the
staff members from the school to help out and he went about getting the table’s
set-up along the hallway. In the
meanwhile Amy, the staff member from Chicago Cares, had also arrived and she
introduced me to Principal Mazin, who thanked us for our service. I started cross checking the inventory list
against the supplies and moving my stuff on to the tables. There were several things that were missing
and Christine was there to ensure that she tracked down whatever I needed. My intention was to separate the inventory as
per the experiments and distribute the supplies on to each station. I had barely scratched the surface when the
Target buses arrived.
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| The hallway for Science Fair |
There still was some time till
everyone checked-in and received their name tags, so I worked as fast as I
could. Even then I had only managed to prepare
two stations, before I had to join everyone in the main auditorium for the
kick-off. It started with Principal
Mazin thanking everyone for coming and then we saw a brief video on Dr. King
and why today was so important. Then we
had speeches from Chicago Cares board member and the Target leader on
site. Finally Christine introduced the 4
volunteer leaders and the projects and asked the Target volunteers to choose
the projects. I was surprised to see
many choosing the painting tasks as well as the Olympics, and very little
enthusiasm for the Science Fair. After a
bit of coaxing and good natured challenges, we managed to gather a group of about 20 for
the science fair.
After the other groups had left,
I asked my volunteers to come back into the auditorium for a briefing
session. “We are the group that’s going to have the most fun”, I said and
this led to some cheers. I went through
the list of experiments and asked the participants to select the activity they
wanted to perform. I tried to make each
of these sound interesting by selling some of the unique characteristics like
the ‘Slime’ experiment being kids favorite to the ‘Alka Seltzer Rocket’ being
someone’s ultimate fantasy of launching a rocket in school hallways! We soon managed to split the group into teams
of 2, 3 or in some cases 4 and headed out.
First job was to assign them to
individual stations and then making sure they had the right supplies. I need not have worried, since the groups
selected their tables and based on the instructions, started procuring their
required supplies from the central stockpile.
I was only required if they were missing something and within no time
they had managed to get what they needed, started setting up their station,
making practice samples and also preparing poster signs to advertise their
individual stations and projects. I am
constantly amazed at how much more capable the people are if you just let them figure
out things for themselves.
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| The 'Alka Seltzer Rocket' station. We made a lot of mess there |
The first station was the ‘Alka
Seltzer Rockets’ and they were expected to make the most mess. There were 4 of them over at that station and
they had already laid down plastic sheets under their table and were
practicing. Next was the ‘Flower In A
Cup’, which required soil and seeds and other nasty stuff. This station had two ladies managing it,
including Angelique, with whom I developed a good rapport. Next was the ‘Handprint Tree’, which had two
women, including Blessing, who was the perfect person to work on a crafts project
with kids. Calm and organized, I
instantly knew she was going to be popular with the children. Next station was ‘Paper Airplanes’, which had
3 guys who were already making different kinds of paper airplanes and testing
them. I told them they should take kids
to a classroom or the end of the corridor and have a race once some of them had
made their planes. Next station was ‘Slime’
with a man and a woman. The man’s name
was Dan and he was the most senior amongst all of the volunteers in my
group. He had been to the school the
previous year and had helped paint the walls.
He said he was excited for the science project and I told him that in my
experience this was the most liked activity with the kids
and they were going to have a blast.
Next were the ‘Whirlybird Helicopter’ with 3 ladies and ‘Hoopster
Airplane’ with a man and a woman. Both
of these groups had already started making models and were testing them by
either launching, or dropping them from the top flight of nearby flight of
stairs. Finally I arrived at the last
station, ‘Parachute Launch’, which had 3 ladies, including Sara and Joyee. Speaking of rapport, I spent the next couple
of hours in constant banter with Sara or moderating between her and Joyee’s
good natured ribbing or just laughing.
With music playing on their phone, this was the most fun group and I had
my best time with them. One of the
initial challenges was selected which poster sign to use, Sara or Joyee’s. Every time I would lean towards one, the
other would make a snide remark directed at me and this went on for some time. Finally, after lot of laughing on my part and
glaring on theirs, we selected one. In fact,
all the groups had done a fantastic job with their signs, which were now
proudly displayed on their stations. Dan had even made their sign with actual slime.
Brilliant!
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| The signs: Note Sara's 'Parachute' poster on bottom left |
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| The Science Fair in full flow |
The kids arrived and my job was making
sure all of the stations had some activity going on. If there were a concentration of kids on one
particular table, say the rockets, I would coax them to make paper
airplanes. If there were more making
rockets, I would challenge them to make a helicopter or a hoopster
airplane. Finally, I would say anyone can make an airplane, but can everyone land, and used this to send kids
to Sara’s station for parachutes. I was
walking up and down the hallway making sure everything was running
smoothly. But the volunteers were
totally immersed and were giving the children a great experience – and having
fun doing it. The
‘Alka Seltzer Rocket’
team had run into some early trouble with not getting their rocket to launch. However, they had improvised and were now using
pop-up film roll bottles to demonstrate the concept. The kids did not seem to mind and loved it
just the same. Angelique and her team were
handing out the cups with soil and seeds and the kids were carrying it back as
if it was the most precious thing. At
one stage they ran out of seeds and Amy and Christine had to go get some
sunflower seeds from a nearby store. Angelique
told me she had made her own cup and was going to carry it back to see the
plant grow. Blessing was encouraging the
kids with their artistic handprint tree and I even noticed her quizzing one
girl on math as she did it. She asked me to make my own handprint and I did so.
The plane, hoopster airplane and helicopter teams were encouraging
competition between the kids and they were having a ball. Plus all the designs from our instruction
manuals had gone out of the window and everyone was improvising. The Slime team was popular as usual and a lot
of plastic bags were being filled and tagged with names. The kids would be receiving their bags in
class the following week. Sara’s station was having fun with their kids and the music.
All in all, everything was fantastic.
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| Kids Olympics |
This gave me an opportunity to
look inside the basketball court and see Marika’s team doing a great job with
the Olympics. She was even handing the
kids medals. At half way stage, the kids
at the Olympics event joined the Science Fair and those outside went in. All the volunteers ran through the same
process with the new lot and finally, around noon we were ready to wrap. Clean-up was the toughest job and many of the
volunteers helped, especially Dan who carried all the tables inside the store
room. We all assembled inside the
auditorium and Principal Mazin once again thanked everyone and then the Target
team applauded the Chicago Cares team for our leadership. A lot of pictures were being taken and I
suggested that we take one of our Volunteer Leadership group. The target volunteers left and I bid them
goodbye at the door, reminding Angelique to take her cup with the seeds.
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| The heroes from Target |
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The Leadership Team (From Left): Rich, John, Moi,
Marika, Christine, Monika and Amy. The Handprint
poster's, one of which has my contribution |
Rich had come in to check on us
and joined us for lunch. We debriefed on
the day and everyone had good things to say about their individual
teams and the experience. Everyone had done a great job, including Rich, Amy and Christine in guiding and providing us with what we needed. We took our
team picture and then there was nothing more to do than decide who needed a
ride where. Rich was going to drop me
off and I told everyone it had been a pleasure and we should get this team
together next year as well. As we rode back, I thought about what this day had
been like and how magnificently the Target team had performed. The quote with which I opened this blog rings
true. It’s quite likely that none of
these Target employees is going to ever be a CEO of a company or invent a cure
for some illness. Probably, none of them will be someone famous or be considered heroes. But they had gone above and beyond the call
of duty. From now onward I will
support Target stores if I can, simply because I have seen the quality of people
that represent the Company. Dr. King
also said "If I cannot do great things, I can do small things in a great way". Dan and Sara and Angelique and Blessing and everyone in the Science Fair
group…my team had not done small, but great things today.
And they had done it in a great way.
As for me, the handprint tree posters
that we made are going to be displayed in the school, perhaps for years to
come. That means somewhere in those
hallways or classrooms, a poster is currently mounted with my handprint on it. This thought alone fills me with immense pride and gratitude.
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| What today was all about |
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