Day Three in Richmond

 “I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality, and freedom for their spirits.”

-          Martin Luther King, Jr., as inscribed on his memorial in Washington, D.C. 

This statement is one that I think sums up the Peter Paul Development Center’s mission fairly well, if on a more grandiose scale.  Peter Paul audaciously tries to provide all of these things to a group of children each day who live in the most extreme poverty that would otherwise prevent them from reaching such rights.  Peter Paul starts off their after school care program by feeding kids “lunch” (their second, since most of them had a much less nutritious form of lunch at their schools), which is usually the most complete and nutritious meal many of them get each day.  Then comes play time to let off some energy, followed by small group and individualized time doing homework and having lessons planned by the teachers at the Peter Paul Development Center, because in order to reach grade level, most kids in these neighborhoods need supplemental education.  All of this is done in a setting that makes the kids feel good about themselves and raises their morale.  I’ve been having a great time here these first three days of the week, witnessing such a program doing good in a neighborhood where not much else is. 

Today at Peter Paul was their first gardening day of the spring.  The center has a small vegetable garden on the left of the building for the kids to work in; the yards in the urban housing projects don’t usually have grass or plants, and the local grocery stores do not stock much produce, so fresh greenery and fresh food are a rarity to many of the kids there, but they seem to love working in the garden.  Today, half the gardening group helped plant peas and other vegetables in a small garden that had already been prepared, while the rest of the participants helped clear out a couple of other garden beds of plants from last year to get them ready for planting.  Eventually, many of the vegetables grown here will be able to be cooked in the kitchen at the center for the kids to eat with their lunch, which I imagine will give them a sense of pride in their ability to help cultivate their own food.  Although we are primarily working with tutoring and educational issues, the incorporation of gardening at Peter Paul has led me to think about several other tangential issues, such as childhood obesity in impoverished families.  The neighborhood we work in only has a couple grocery stores, and the majority of the food in them is processed and packaged, not fresh and nutritious.  The neighborhood also isn’t exactly the safest place for kids to run and play much, and although most of the kids at Peter Paul are not obese, their lifestyles certainly aren’t the healthiest in the world.  I think working here has made me think much more than the intellectual skills I encourage the kids to use when I am tutoring at Peter Paul. 

The kids were excited to see me return to Glen Lea today.  Jaylen and Aviona were my best friends for the day; I love the whole class I’m with, but these two kids were especially sweet today.  Aviona is one of the quieter kids in the class.  At recess, I played tag with those two, Anna, Mauricia, Deja, Artasia, and a few other kids in the class (I’m still having a little trouble keeping all the boys’ names straight, especially the quiet ones).  Today was art day for my class, and each child painted a paper in various hues of blue, which they are going to use as a sky background to paint flowers on next week.  They’ve also been working on the letter Z, tally marks, and counting by tens in kindergarten this week. I did several housekeeping tasks while they did their lessons, but got to play with blocks and iPads with the kids during centers and had lunch with them again.  The kids get into huge arguments over who gets to sit next to me at lunch, so I had to switch tables halfway through lunch to appease them all.  It’s incredibly difficult to eat with twenty kids asking you to sit by them and open their juice boxes and bags of chips the whole time; it’s even more difficult to convince the kids to eat their lunches when there’s someone novel there to talk to the whole time, but I want them to eat so that they can focus during class. 

I can’t believe the week is already half over.  I’ve been having a blast and learning so much this week; my kindergarteners don’t want me to leave, and I don’t want to leave them, either, but it’s already getting near the end of our week here!  This has been such a valuable and enjoyable experience that I think all college students should have, because I’ve certainly learned more this week doing hands on service than I think I ever have in a classroom.