Chicago TFA Day 2

On the first day of going to the school, my partner, Lianna, and I got up at 6am because it took about an hour to commute to the school we were going to be working at. As cheap as it was to use public transportation in Chicago, it took a long time to get to places. We used the rail to get to downtown Chicago, where we then had to switch to another rail to take us to southwest Chicago, an area known for its poverty. Then, we had to get on a bus to finally arrive at our school. On the way there, I noticed the predominately Hispanic population in the neighborhood in which our school was at. I saw mainly Hispanic stores and restaurants. Once we went inside the school, we were immediately stopped by a security guard, who asked us what we were doing there, and this was something I had never seen before at a school.
It was really surprising how nice the school was. It was an all Hispanic school and the teachers mostly white so it was interesting being in that kind of situation. The teacher we were with was actually from Overland Park so it was cool getting to relate to her. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania so we had the utmost respect for her. She's a second year 7th grade math/science teacher and was really nice. When we were observing her class, we could definitely notice a lot of distractions among the students. A few of them had several side conversations and the teacher had to constantly call them out in the middle of class.
Since at this school, there was no library, each teacher had to have their own library for students. Our teacher combined books with the other 7^th grade teacher so that they could have a decently sized library. However, it takes a lot of time to help organize the books, so the teachers did not have much time to maintain the books. We spent most of the day leveling the books and organizing them. We spent the last part of the day helping the 7^th grade teachers with small groups and assisting them with homework.

Chicago TFA Day 1

We left for Chicago at night on the Megabus so we got there at 7am pretty groggily because the seats weren't exactly comfortable. I actually thought sleeping on an airplane was much easier. Once we arrived in Chicago, we were rather disoriented and lost so it took us a long time to figure out how to use the Chicago transport authority. When we finally got situated at the church, we talked to the church leaders, who were really friendly. Fortunately, we were staying in the northside of Chicago, in Lincoln park which is in north Chicago, so we were in one of the nicer neighborhoods. DePaul university was across the street from us so we liked the atmosphere.  We were all so tired that several of us took naps before we went out to explore.
Once we were somewhat rested, we used the "l line" to go to Wrigleyville and check out Wrigley field, the home of the Chicago cubs. After that, we walked downtown to millennium park, where we checked out the ever popular "bean" that is well known for being able to see the reflection of the city. We then walked to Kincade's, a bar and restaurant owned by Kansas alumni to watch the KU Purdue game. Since it was a bar dedicated to Kansas, it was nice being in a bar with fellow Kansas fans all around. After that thrilling finish, we were all exhausted and decided to go back to the church since it had been such a long day. It had been estimated that we had walked around 7 miles. In addition, at most, we had gotten about 5 hours of sleep the night before. Overall, we all liked our first day since we were able to get a better sense of what Chicago is like. It wasn’t horribly crowded and we were very fortunate to have such great weather, in the 70s all day and sunny! It wasn’t too crowded ever but we did notice that Chicago seemed to go at a much quicker pace than what we were used to in Lawrence.

Day 4 Joplin 211

Today we woke up to... MORE rain. Fortunately were a little more willing to wake up this morning, it's funny that out of 7 people none of us are morning people. Today the Americore office sent us back to Elk's Lodge to work on tree limb debris removal. Last night, when it had stopped raining for a couple of hours, the city took bulldozers through the land to remove the debris that we had moved to the street. The bulldozers left the muddy ground very hard to walk through. So we decided to start the day working in the "Fire-brigade" lines of volunteers. We were all correct the first day when we thought that the lines worked inefficiently. However, this did give me a chance to mingle with the other volunteers. One guy next to me came from the University of Tulsa and was studying Electrical Engineering which is what my dad does so we had a lot to talk about. Another lady who recognized what sorority I was in just from my earrings and I talked for a long time and I found out she and her husband took the whole week off work to come down from Cincinnati and help with anything they needed in Joplin. Other volunteers I talked to were locals and said that their houses were not damaged, but some lost their jobs since their places of work were ruined, I had not even thought about that. Not only did people lose their houses, but they also lost a steady flow of income as well. Around noon, it started to completely pour and many groups left. Our group, and a group from the University of Oklahoma were the only ones who stayed. We all worked together to remove a whole pile of debris and even tree trunks together. We were soaked from head to toe but at the same time today was a blast! On the way home, we remembered the story from yesterday of the baby being thrown 12 blocks, and put that into perspective as we drove.

After a very long VERY hot shower, we went to the community kitchen to make dinner. We met a group of elderly RV enthusiasts that were staying there the whole week as well. They even made us dinner and served us sweets! (They obviously know how to get on a college kid's good side) After dinner they taught us how to play a card game called "O Hell" which is the common expression used in this game. We stayed up late playing cards with them and I am so excited to have a rematch tomorrow! We ended the rainy day with group bonding time and answering questions!!

Day 3 Joplin 211

Today we had a late start to our day due to the rain! I truly have never seen so much rain. Since we are a smaller group of seven, the Americore sent us to the salvation army distribution center. We folded and sorted the many clothes donations that the Salvation Army received. The Salvation Army was preparing for a clothes give away they would be having the week of April 9-15. The man in charge of the clothes give away said they were preparing to see any where from 10,000- 15,000 people that had suffered from the tornado and are now homeless. He said they had a clothes give away a couple of weeks after the storm hit for just one day and they say 8,000 people go through and take clothes. We were lucky to work there because it was dry and worked the whole day. Around noon, a group of younger middle school aged volunteers came to help. We were all very thankful for the help, but when 20 younger children are running around the building, the help was almost counter-productive. However, we went on with a positive attitude about it, and found the younger volunteers easy jobs to do, like collecting and removing all stained clothes. We were the last group in the building, and when 3:00 hit, we decided to do a "power hour", where we pumped up the music and tried to get as much as possible done. It was fun to do that in a hurry and we finished off a whole other palette of donations. After we were finished, we talked to the man in charge about the day of the tornado. He lived outside of Joplin, and said after he had heard about the tornado, he and his wife rushed in to help. He was an EMT and his wife worked at triage helping people. He worked with search and rescue, and said that he pulled 200-300 people out of the rebel and debris of the city. He said he worked for three days strait helping to find people and never slept. He also shared very heartbreaking stories, like going to rescue a mother and her child who were pleading for help, but a whole entire 2 X 4 was pierced through the both of them. Another one was he found a baby in a tree, completely unscratched and perfectly fine, but her house, where the baby was in her mothers arms was 12 blocks away! The wind and the tornado had picked the baby up from the mother's arms and tossed it. One other thing he had mentioned was that he was so thankful for us to be here, but they were definitely seeing a huge decline in volunteers until Spring Break season had started.

Day 2 Joplin 211

We woke up bright and early this morning to head over to the Americore office in Joplin. When we arrived there were already so many volunteers waiting for further instruction, and then all the sudden 3 busses pulled up with fifty people each! We were instructed to work at the Elk's lodge for the day. When we arrived at the site of what "was" the Elk's Lodge, all you could see was fallen tree limbs. Tree limbs, tree trunks, and building parts like plywood was stretched out for about 10-15 acres. The many volunteers that were there started forming "fire brigade" type lines from the piles of debris to the dumpster and passing tree branches and limbs down the line. After accessing the situation, myself and all other group members decided that was a very inefficient ways of getting the job done. We decided since we were older it would be more beneficial to just cary many debris by ourselves or using a wheelbarrow. With the help of a few others we easily cleared two piles before lunch time, when it took the line of volunteers much longer to clear one pile. During the clean up, Sam was interviewed and got her picture taken for the Joplin World Newspaper! It will be awesome to see if she makes it into the paper. The head count of volunteers at the area reached 344 if I am not mistaken and many groups were young youth groups from churches. It was great seeing how many people still care about this area and how they are willing to show support.

On the drive towards the lodge we passed through the residential area in Joplin, the effects of the tornado were more evident. There would be one house rebuilt because it looked brand new, but five cement foundations surrounding that one house that used to be there. They still have a long way to go. To the left of Elk's Lodge was the main hospital of Joplin. It was one of the buildings that was most effected, and learned that the strong winds of the tornado moved the hospital 4 inches from it's foundation! The building was very comparable to the scene off of  "Batman The Dark Knight" when the joker walks away from the hospital after blowing it up.

Unfortunately mother nature had a say in what time we stopped working, and we were done at 1:30 due to lightening and rain. When we got "home", there was standing water in mine and Wendy's tent!! Thankfully, the owner of the campsite updated us to the surrounding cabins for free! I'm thanking God we have a dry place to sleep for the next week! It also made me think of all the people of Joplin that suddenly had no place to live, just like we did. We were lucky in that we had somewhere else to stay, but I guarantee others were less fortunate.

Day 1 Joplin 211

Whoo!! Finally leaving Lawrence! We met at Sam's apartment complex on 11th street and we are headed out! We stuffed the van to maximum capacity. Thanks to my prior knowledge of mini vans (which is so helpful) we found out that there were secret compartments under all of the seats so that we could stuff even more of our stuff. I was in the back seat and my knees were pulled up to my chest... what a long 3 hours! After a pretty decent nap and an awesome jam session we arrive at KOA camp ground site a couple miles past Joplin. With six girls and one guy we managed to set up three tents which only took less then 30 minutes... that has to be some kind of record. After getting settled, we made a Walmart run to collect our groceries for the next couple days for sack lunches. Driving around the commercial part of Joplin, I did not see a whole lot of damage, which was kind of shocking, I didn't know what it would look like when we got there.

Arriving back to camp, we made friends with a flock of ducks that call the camp grounds their home, and they made friends with our Alternative Break Jayhawk! We spent the rest of the night cheering on the Jayhawks with fellow KU alumni at buffalo wild wings in Joplin! What a stressfull game! Then we arrived back at the campsite and celebrated with smores and group bonding time!

TFA: Final thoughts.

Every day, after all of us had returned back to the church from school, our group would sit around and share stories and thoughts that we accumulated throughout the day at our respective schools.  We always had so many things to share, that this informal ‘debriefing’ process would naturally occur in most of our conversations whether they were while we were sitting around the church relaxing, walking somewhere while sight-seeing, or while we all shared a meal in Chicagoan restaurant.  Mia and Erin, who were volunteering at a pre-k school, always had funny “kids say the darndest things”-type stories.  Beth and Alex, who were volunteering in a performance arts high-school class, where kids would read their personal poetry, often shared with us stories of heart-wrenching tragedy detailed in their student’s poems.  Not only would we share these stories and experiences with one another, but we would often talk about how these experiences made us feel.  One such conversation formed and took place as we walked along the banks of Lake Michigan profiting from Chicago’s beautiful downtown, night-time skyline.  We noted that what we were seeing looked like the picture perfect postcard; and this observation sparked a conversation that took us all the way back to our second week of class—to the Ivan Illich piece we read.  As tourists, we experienced Chicago as a place with great food, great sights, and great fun; but as volunteers, we experienced Chicago as a place with drugs, violence, poverty, and despair—things that have been forgotten and omitted in Chicago’s representation on the picture perfect postcard.  This juxtaposition we faced, as tourist/volunteer, made us question ourselves and our motives.   What were we actually doing here in Chicago?  Clearly, all of us came with the good intention of ‘helping’ those we were volunteering for, but at the end of the day, we remain unaffected by the daunting reality of Chicago’s inner-city, and the effect it has on its public education system.  How did our presence actually impact these kids?  Sure, from our point of view, it’s easy to think that we came and helped them with their schoolwork for a week and gained a better understanding and awareness for the inequity in public education.  But what about from our students’ point of view?  Were we just another group of white people, coming to their neighborhoods, “righteously” and “nobly” exercising our privilege before scurrying back to our worry-free lives after a single week?  What impact did our presence have on their psyche?  Was it really as positive as we would like to tell ourselves? 

Our conversation, needless to say, was pretty depressing…but it made us reflect honestly about our experience.  The culmination of our ‘debate’, in relation to Ivan Illich and whether or not our presence and “help” in Chicago’s public school system was justified, was contingent on what we would do after returning home.  Would we be “slacktivists” or would we take what we saw, learn from it, and do something about it?  Would we come home and say, “Yeah, the inequity in public education sucks.  That’s too bad.  Anyway, so how bout them Jayhawks?” or would we come home and say, “Yeah the inequity in public education sucks.  How else can I help?  What else can I do?  How do we fix this?”