Project Brainstorms

Chris Castaneda

This week was unbelievably hot, so unfortunately we weren't able to explore South Chicago as much as we had in previous weeks. This did provide a good opportunity for us to buckle down inside and work on our solidifying our topic and our project ideas. This week was a bit rough with attendance, and that made things even more tough because of the holiday on Wednesday. We really had to rally on Tuesday in order to make sure we could finish our project descriptions and our presentation for the book.

                  

On Monday, only one high school student showed up, so we really struggled to get much accomplished. It gave us a chance to really focus on one project, and I think we made a terrific amount of progress. Tuesday was an awesome day with everyone coming together to get some serious work done. The projects finally became clearer, and we began strategizing as to how to best implement the projects. With such a productive day, we decided to end it working on presentation skills. We assigned the students to teach us something that they love to do. It ultimately ended in a dance party with everyone sharing different dance moves they know, and of course, a lot of laughs were shared.

                  
With the day off in the middle of the week, Friday felt somewhat rushed. With our project topics picked, we chose to hit the ground running with research. We looked up all of the topics that interest the students, and I was really impressed with how well the students interpreted some of the scholarly articles they found. I know that when I was sixteen, all of the same articles would probably have gone completely over my head. It was inspiring to see how well they absorbed and analyzed the material. Of course, this is only the beginning, and we will be doing more intense research on Monday. I'm really excited to move forward, as the project slowly starts to materialize and become a reality.