Uptown Tech Club

Location: Brennemann (Joseph) Elementary School

Date: Saturday, April 18, 2015; 10:00am-12:00 pm

I used to come here for the “Drama Club” and that was one of the best Chicago Cares projects that I have attended, till it was cancelled.  So it was months later that I walked over to the school and arrived at the cafeteria to see the leader for “Read-With-Me” project and some volunteers.  I talked to them about the old project and how the kids had been extremely shy in person, but it was as if a switch had been turned on and they went into character when we started our improv skits.  It’s a pity that the project was cut.  A little girl was playing with a paper model of a ‘Chinese Dragon’ and it was brilliant.  I asked if she had made it and she said no.  She was having fun playing with it though and every now and then brought the dragon close to me and made growling sounds.  She would have been right at home at the drama project.

My Volunteer leader, Paul arrived and I went and joined him and 3 other volunteers.  A couple of the guys in that group were regulars and had been coming to this project for a long time.  Paul took us to a room with computers and our first task was to turn them on and logging in, which was easier said than done. The user name was a code that would have made the Government proud and I said as much!  The computer took a long time to start and then we had to install a program called "Scratch" from a flash drive, something that we would be using for our lesson today.

In the meanwhile, the kids had arrived and they were anywhere from 10-14 years of age.  Paul said that before we started on the computers, we would play the game of ‘Scattergories’ and he asked the kids to form teams.  There were 3 teams, one of 2 boys, then 3 girls and finally 3 other boys.  I said that I would play as well and Paul then gave everyone the 7 questions that we had to write answers to: (1) Name of a  City, (2) Things people give as presents, (3) Name of a show on TV, (4) A Job Title, (5) Things people do that are crazy, (6) Something that you want to do this summer and (7) A Basketball player who was currently in the ‘NBA’ playoffs.  You got 1 point for a unique answer and 2 points for a creative one.  There were no points awarded if someone else had the same answer as you.   Another volunteer gave us the letter, which was ‘C’ and we were ready to go.  I wrote down “Cancun” for my city; “Coloring supplies” as my present; “CSI” as the TV show; “Chief Operating Officer” as a Job Title; “Climbing steep mountains” as a crazy activity; “Car trip through Glacier National Park” as something that I am doing this summer; and since I do not follow basketball, just said “Chris Paul” as my player in the playoffs, not knowing if that was true.

The kids were struggling with a city that was other than Chicago, and I mentioned "Capital of Ohio, with the largest University".  The funny thing was that they knew the name of the University, ‘OSU’, but not the city!  Then one of my fellow volunteers asked "Who discovered America" and then they got it.  There were a few creative answers but nothing more than two boys who responded to the "What would you be doing this summer" question with the answer, "Crocheting".  I said to Paul that we should just give it to them and that there was no need for another answer.  There was another interesting answer to “Things people do that’s crazy”, where the girls team responded with, “Cocaine”.  Even the other teams said that they deserved the points on that one!

What a great concept

We now ready for our activity on ‘Scratch’, which was an animated cat and we had to program its moves on the screen using some logic statements.  I was paired with a boy who seemed interested.  We followed Paul's instructions to get the cat to move around though I could see the kid's interest slowly fading away.  Two other girls had discovered various characters in the program, such as a "hot" woman, a kneeling guy and a football player.  The way they had programmed it, it seemed like the kneeling guy was proposing to the girl and she was walking to and fro from the guy and the football player as if she was confused.  Paul said that the girls always preferred “jocks”, and that eventually the program should end with her next to the player.  Paul then showed us a few more programming exercises and by now and I was extremely impressed that the kids were being taught logic through this.  It was by far the best education I had seen through a Chicago Cares project. 

The kids had enough of the lesson and so next we played a game of "guess who", where the kids had a card of some object, animal, or thing, which they placed on a headband and had to guess by asking "yes/no" questions.  The problem was that others were so enthusiastic that they were giving them easy clues.  But it was all fun.  After a bit of chaos around this, we all proceeded to the gym for some playtime.  Some of the kids started shooting basketballs while one girl was showing us her skills with a “hula hoop”.  I was chatting with other volunteers and learned that this was in fact Paul’s last session after 4 years, since he was moving away; but the 2 regular guys were going to take over as leaders.  Around noon we all left after what had been a great session. I had enjoyed the company of the kids and my fellow volunteers. What a great educational program this is!  While I would always miss the “Drama Club”, this was a worthy replacement.