Yesterday I talked about how community and loneliness were on the rise in Part I of this week’s blog series. I also spoke about how Higher Education is uniquely able to make a difference and to improve community/loneliness situation for Americans.
There are so many different ways this can be done. Bringing senior citizens from the community on campus for art events. Having college students volunteer at local senior centers. Connecting with high school students to talk about science. Having robot workshops for fathers and their sons and mothers and their daughters and everyone else. Having an astronomy night for everyone in the town. Colleges and Universities are able to make a real difference.
But it ain’t easy. Let’s talk about our day today.
Today we went to Tottenville HS. It is far away from Adelphi in Staten Island. But I love going there for lots of reasons. The people are great! They get their HS students to take physics in their sophomore year – which I love. I think the students are young enough to be open to our message supporting the physical sciences while simultaneously being old enough to be interested in college and future plans. Plus, I really like the whole High School. It is so unique, the school and the area. We want to help everyone that wants us in the door. I actually considered buying a purple Tottenville Pirate sweatshirt today as I walked by the little bookstore.
But its far away from Adelphi. We were comparing times we got up this morning to get at Tottenville. One person from Queens said 5:30, then came me from Connecticut (4:30am), but then came the college students who car pooled from Adelphi. They got up a 3:30 am!! That’s right my college students woke up at 3am to drive hours away on their summer vacation to spread the good word of science. Not one student did this, but many! And they did it with a smile.
There was construction and parking near the school was a nightmare. I got there at 7:05. I couldn’t find a parking spot until 7:30. Still early! But then I had to get the equipment from Luis who was also looking for a spot. He ended up dropping the equipment off and find a spot numerous blocks away. Ugh. It was that kind of day.
So, in the end we were sort of on-time. I was there with the equipment 10 minutes for our first 8:00am class. But when you are hurrying things happen. For starters, my cart with all the science equipment fell over spraying everything everywhere. After a while we got it all back on the cart. And headed to the elevator. The elevator was out of order so we had to walk to the one on the other side of school. Normally this when I would just have had my team carry everything up the stairs but were all spread out all over the school. So off to the second elevator. I moved two more feet and the cart tipped over again. Thank you to the many Tottenville students and staff that helped me this morning. I was a disaster.
After cleaning up and finding some team members we walked to the other elevator. Got up to class about 15 minutes late. Half of the equipment was sightly out of whack (likely because stuff fell over) so a few of things weren’t running and our team had to work to fix them. Not the end of the world, but it was a busy stressful morning. It stinks when the equipment just doesn’t work.
Sometimes we get students who have done our experiments before because they take physics twice in high school (one at the Regents level and one at the AP level). A few of those high school students were stressing about their pre-calculus exam – which was literally happening in the next period. So about half of them came in the room and as quickly as possible did all of the activities we had laid out and got them working, opened their IPADS wand started studying. It was the weird – but I can definitely understand. Instead of fighting it, I tried to go with it and turn the second half of the class into a review session for their exam. That didn’t work either.
[I am working on a quantum careers workshop I am doing on Friday for these students who have already seen the workshop. I tried to sense their interest. But they were so intently working on the Lab for Kids activities at the beginning of the class, I didn’t want to stop them. Though if I knew why I would like have had the quantum careers discussion.]
Then one of our Adelphi students got mildly sick (nothing contagious or major). The other Adelphi students were amazing besties. They sprung to life covering her Lab for Kids activities, taking care of her, and a few of them headed out to get some medicine.
But of course, in the group that went out they took all the cars. HAHAHA! So I had to throw on my Door Dash hat and go get lunch for folks. I don’t mind of course, it just was a tough day. And I was trying to avoid collecting orders and such.
And the trip home through rush hour traffic wasn’t fun either.
But
Near the end of the day Luis and I were sitting in the corner going over all of little the missteps of the day – I am sure I am missing a few. When the teacher came and sat with us for a moment. She said something to effect, “Thank you. Your team got them to come alive today.” It was clear we made a difference, even if it took everything we had. I am so proud of my team.
Making a difference is like this. This is what we all need to do in Higher Education. It is grueling, slow, and the little stuff gets ya. The only way to win is roll up your sleeves, and show your smile. My Adelphi students showed me today understand this. I can’t tell you how proud I am.
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