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Chloe Frank May Project Journal Due 5/29/19 For my May Project, I volunteered in University City Children’s Center’s infant room, where I fed, changed, and entertained eight babies. Over the four weeks I spent there, I bonded immensely with the children, as well as the teachers there. I am going to miss it like crazy and plan on visiting as much as possible during the next three months. The following are different stories and observations about the people I spent my time with, all of whom I completely adore. Mandi is one of the teachers in my classroom and she has been such a sweetheart to me since day one. She is an endearing oversharer so I feel like I know much of her backstory now. After having her first baby when she was fifteen, she decided she loved children and wanted to be a mother figure for as many kids as possible so this job was a natural fit for her. I noticed her maternal instincts toward not only the kiddos but also towards me very quickly, a role she was hap...
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May Project week 3

On Monday, Sandeep and I taught a kindergarten again.The school was Sorrento Springs Elementary School in the parkway school district. This elementary school was weird to me because school started at 7:30. That seemed very early for kids to be up and active to me. Our classroom was interesting because every once in a while, the kids would have movement breaks where they would dance to kids youtube videos. They also had recess and snack time during the middle of one of the lessons. One little girl named Maya was a very good participant during the activities. As she got up from her desk to run outside for recess, she looked me in the eyes and said “AWW I miss my mommy.” With a straight face and a sad tone in her voice. I felt sad for her. But she seemed to forget about it when she came back in. This day of teaching was problematic because most lesson incorporate discussion into them. Because the kids are in kindergarten, the questions are often time easy and fun to answer. This caused mo...
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May Project week 2

This week has been something. Monday we taught at Cuivre Park Elementary school in Troy, Missouri. It was an hour drive away but I had music so it went by a little faster. When I arrived, the teachers were waiting outside with a speaker playing kids bop for the kids. I cringed and went into the main office to wait for our other boss and the other volunteers to arrive. Our 5th grade tour guide, Mckenze, then led us to her classroom. The teacher was very nice and helpful; she had snacks laid out for us and bottles of water. I immediately tried to figure out who the problem child would be. Then he presented himself, his name was James. He did not do any work but he participated in the activities at least. There was a nice little girl with glasses who kept asking me for help. She was very eager to learn and then she told me why she kept asking me for help. She told me that she was Autistic and she thought all the other kids in the class hated her because of it. I tried to reassure her, b...
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Drey Land Service Corps

For my remaining 40 hours of service, I went to Drey Land with Olivia L, Mia, Max, and Will F. The trip was so much fun! A couple of days before we left, we went grocery shopping as we were responsible for bringing our own food. On the way to Drey Land, we stopped at IHOP in Rolla before we realized we missed our exit and that we were a little lost. Thanks to Mia's direction skill via Maps, Max, Mia, and I soon found our way and gave directions to Olivia and Will who were in the other car. When we got to Drey Land, we were soon put to work. Over the course of the next few days, we stained cabins, the Lodge, and the Pavilion, weed wacked the entire grounds, cleaned mouse poop off of the shelves in the Lodge, cleaned bathrooms, swept cabins, and did basically whatever else Mr. Dee thought needed to accomplish. After we finished working each day, we were able to do pretty much whatever we wanted and would spend the afternoon swimming, building bonfires, and playing Cards Against Human...
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Giant Blog Post

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Because I am a master procrastinator, this massive blog entry is more of a reflection than it is a real-time account of my May Project experience. My apologies for that! However, I have done my best to make it engaging and I have consulted my real-time handwritten journal which includes some accounts of May Project. Preparation / May Project Planning Day Today I first meet Nancy Willimon, an accomplished stained glass artist, mother of Beau Willimon (creator of House of Cards ), and possibly the most enthusiastic person over the age of 60 I have ever met. It seems that she loves everything she does. She describes to us the necessary attributes of a plausible design for a stained glass window, and we begin brainstorming. (After designs are due, we meet with Ms. Allison and Ms. Oates to discuss Mrs. Willimon’s suggestions and to design final proposals.) Today I also meet Ann Dockery, the volunteer coordinator at the Crisis Nursery, who explains what goes on at the nursery. In...
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Kingdom House - Day 6-7

My last days volunteering at Kingdom House for May Project I helped Misty who heads children and adolescent services. I organized Misty's office and shredded some documents that she needed to get rid of. I then helped her with the meal sheet tally which basically consists of taking the government meal count worksheet and filling it out with the number of meals that were available each day and the number of people they served each day. To do this, I take the catering production sheets and copy down the number of meals the catering service provided onto the worksheet and then figuring out the number of kids who were present by totaling the kids' personal attendance sheets. This was a little tedious, but with earbuds in it was pretty relaxing. I then had to take all of the government worksheets and match them with the corresponding meal production sheet, hole punch them, and then put them in order by the dates in a binder.  On the last day, I took a pause from filling out meal ...
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Kingdom House - Days 2-5

The next few days at Kingdom House I shredded papers for Samantha at the senior center. I had never shredded so many papers in my entire life. Samantha had inherited an entire tub of documents dating back to the 90s that she and the other senior center employees had never had time to deal with. There were copies of credit cards, social security cards, and other identity compromising documents that I needed to get rid of. For four days, when I came to Kingdom House I would plug in my earbuds, play some good music, and try to shred as many papers as I could before the shredder burnt out. After the shredder continuously burnt out, I decided to grab a shredder from the adolescent office in the other building so that I could continuously alternate shredders. This method worked pretty well until about day three when the second shredder started to break, jamming at the slightest presence of thick paper. It then eventually broke and was basically spitting out whole, perforated ...
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