Location: Chicago Foundation For Education
Date: Tuesday, April 2, 2013; 5:45-8:00 pm
First of all, let me start by
saying that the title of this project is cheesier than a Chicago Deep Dish
pizza. For that reason alone I was
inclined to skip this One Brick event, but it was for a good cause and so I
showed up at the location with Irina, whom I had convinced to join. Speaking of location, the CFE had recently
moved offices and so there was some confusion, since One Brick was showing me
one address and Google Maps another. I
decided to follow the one provided by One Brick and thankfully, that turned out
to be the correct one.
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| CFE Flyer that we were labeling |
Irina and I went upstairs to be
met by Laura, our Event Manager for the evening. Along with her was Amy, another One Brick
regular, but who was representing CFE tonight.
Apparently, Amy had landed a job with the CFE while volunteering through
One Brick; a model example of networking at its best. She explained our job for the evening, which was
basically labeling their information flyers, that were going to be mailed to
schools all across the city. According
to the Event Description on One Brick website, “CFE offers Chicago Public School teachers all sorts of professional
development opportunities - and this mailing will get the word out on the
Teachers Workshop in September, Small Grants Program and CFE's calendar of
events. By getting the word out, CFE can
help inspire more teachers to improve their skills!” Besides this, some other information
available to us was, “The Chicago
Foundation for Education (CFE) promotes educational quality, curricular
innovation, and academic and social integrity throughout the Chicago Public
School Community. By directing resources towards the teacher level (through
four unique grant- and fellowship-based programs), they encourage teachers to
develop and share innovative approaches to meeting the needs of their students.
Since 1985, CFE has awarded more than 5.5 million dollars in grants to
teachers, directly benefiting nearly 1,000,000 students in 30,000 classrooms
across Chicago.”
Before we began, Amy told us a
bit more about the types of grants, which included: (1) Small Grants, which were $500 and funded the implementation of
classroom or school wide curricular projects for PreK to 8th grade
teachers; (2) Fund for Teachers
Fellowships, which were a $5,000 and $10,000 fund for teachers from PreK to
12th grade to explore the world through professional learning
experiences; (3) Study Group Coach Grants,
which were $1,000 to offer leadership opportunities to PreK to 8th
grade teachers; (4) Study Group Grants,
which were $300 to help PreK to 8th grade teachers learn new
teaching strategies as well as provide them resources to implement those
strategies and (5) Action Research
Fellowships, which were $1,250 and awarded to PreK to 8th grade
teachers interested in conducting action research for the purpose of improving
instruction and enhancing student achievement, with their classroom, school or
even the district. With all these
grants, information material needed to be mailed and it was this mailing that
we were labeling.
Furthermore, this was to be sorted according to the ‘Mailing Run’
numbers.
Laura recruited couple of
volunteers and took them to another room for labeling postcards, while Irina
and I sat around a long table with other volunteers, Kelly, Vince – who was
also tonight’s Event Coordinator - and three others. Initially, everyone was quiet and totally
focused on the job at hand, which was peeling the labels, affixing them to the
flyer, and sorting by ‘Mailing Run’ number.
Not exactly developing the next generation of iPhone! On a white board in the room, someone had
written, ‘Men’s Room – Blue Key; Women’s
Room – Pink Key’. To break the
silence I said, “Glad they specified
the color code”, and this seemed to open the floodgates. Soon we were chatting away to glory.
Since the ladies outnumbered the
guys, books rather than sports, was the topic of conversation; with Laura
leading the charge. After talking about
the ‘Hunger Games’ trilogy and the
movie – both of which I have enjoyed, Laura turned to a series called ‘Divergent’, which is also being made
into a movie. While Laura loved the book
series, her main lament was the fact that the books were written by a mere 22
year old Chicago native. Laura was bemoaning that while the author was now rich and famous, she was just the opposite. One
other volunteer mentioned another book called ‘The Giver’ and the similarities between the two. Having not read these books, I was keeping my
ears on the conversation, but my eyes were firmly set on ensuring I was
sticking the labels in a right manner. Some
of the ladies commented on how the kids have lost the desire to read and are
relying on Cliff Notes. My views on this
are a bit different. I would much rather
the kids learn about the classic through cliff notes or audio books than not at
all. As long as it gets them curious and
possibly excited about the stories, then it has fulfilled its purpose.
Since we were on the topic of
writing, Laura mentioned about a blog that she had come across. It was a guy writing about all of his worst
dates. It seems like the blog has quite
a following and he has been on plenty of bad dates. This mystified me since (a) either this guy
was the biggest jerk and considered all of his dates beneath him or (b) he was
a big buffoon who somehow managed to turn every date into a disaster. And how was he getting so many dates in the
first place? If he was so popular
through his blog, why would any woman want to go out with him, knowing that the
story is going to end up on a blog?
Perhaps that’s what they were hoping for, in which case they deserved each other. We agreed that this guy’s
blogging career may be short-lived if this keeps up, since he may not have
enough new material to write about.
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| The inhabitant of Lower Wacker Drive |
While this conversation was going
on, none of us stopped working and the flyers with labels were piling up. I told them about my volunteering experience and once again we discussed the Chicago Cares vs. One Brick model. Tonight
was a perfect example. We were sticking
labels for God’s sake. It is something
that would never happen on a Chicago Cares project. Even so, it was helping a good cause and that
means I should consider it a privilege to help.
When it comes to volunteering, one of the major concerns people have is
travel and transportation. It is a valid
point, and also something that I had trepidation's about in the beginning. However, once you get used to the public
transport, it becomes second nature. I
told everyone that I had traveled far and wide for Chicago Cares projects and
used all sorts of transportation.
Speaking of which, I often use cabs to get around and if I am going
anywhere near the loop from my place, the cab drivers ask me if I would prefer
to use the upper or the lower Wacker Drive – made famous by the ‘Batman’ movies. I have found that question amusing since I
could care less what route they take. It’s
not as if the Joker is waiting for me
down there is it?
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| So bad that they are great |
Next, the topic moved to movies and
Vince and I talked about the upcoming ‘Fast
And The Furious’ movie. Now, I am a
huge fan of so-bad-its-great acting and Vin Diesel and The Rock are superstars
in that category. Also, considering the
rumors that Jason Statham – one of the greatest bad actors around – is going to
be in the next one of this franchise, is reason alone for me to show up on opening day. Even with the movie chatter, we had a lull in
conversation and whenever that happens, there’s only one thing left to do –
bring up the topic of Wilson! That kept
us going for the rest of the evening, exchanging stories and all our humorous anecdotes
associated with him.
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| The Icebreaker keys |
Soon, the last flyer had been
labeled and we were ready to depart. Before
we left I spotted the famous blue and pink keys for the washrooms and took a
picture of that. It was my comment of
those keys that had started this wonderful evening of conversation. Sometimes all that people need to break the
ice is a nudge and these keys had certainly provided that. Amy thanked us for coming and said that it
would have taken them hours otherwise. I
asked what the review process was for these grant applications. I was surprised to learn that applications
were going to be reviewed by volunteers and all applications were going to be
accepted for some sort of an award. They
reckoned that if the applicants felt it important enough to invest time in
drafting a proposal, they deserved to get rewarded. I could live with that philosophy.
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