Success at All Costs

It is funny how an idea can change my life immensely, it began with the passion of helping others and it ended with a life changing summer program for students whose passion is to succeed no matter how many obstacles are put in front of them.

Half way there!

Looking back at all that I have done with my Senior Project, I feel like I have made a lot of progress. I feel that I have learned how to manage my time more efficiently with dealing with this project. I started off with the idea of helping people and starting an institution in a poor country. This idea was way too big to start off with. But as time went by I needed a smaller project but with the same intentions. I decide to partner up  with Robert Ramirez in a project in which helping others is the goal. The project is creating a summer program that gives students a new perspective on learning and teaching. It will give students who need help with education and it will help students who have a passion for helping others. We will be giving students who achieve in school have an opportunity to teach those who need help in school subjects. We will also try to have the older students give personal advice to younger students. So far we have talked to a lot of people that are going to help us in the future. We have started to read Three Cups of Tea by By Greg Mortenson & David Oliver Relin. We plan to schedule interviews at Whittier Elementary. We have contacted Kathy Heinzerling, she is in charge of the Breakthrough program. She has helped us contact Frank Duffy who is in charge of Pennies for Peace. This relates to the Three Cups of Tea. We will get help from him in analyzing data that we collect. With the past research that I have done I feel that I have learned a lot about communications. I have learned to be patient and wait for feedback from certain people. I have learned that its not that the people you contact don't care. Its just that the people have too much going on and don't have time to respond. We have scheduled a day where Welcome Wilson Sr ( Chairman for the University of Houston) will help us analyze information we have gather.   The people we plan to invite onto our panel are:

Betsy Phillips: Betsy works with advertising. Therefore she could help us advertise our program.Betsy will evaluate the creativity of our advertising.

Laura Acosta: Laura works with H.I.S.D. She has been very helpful by giving us information on certain students. She has recommended we interview certain students that have bad backgrounds.She will evaluate us with how well we did our interviews and the creativity of the project. 

Frank Duffy: Frank works with the Pennies for Peace, he is helping us help students out.He will be our financial adviser. Frank will evaluate how much the project makes progress.

Dana Lipinsky: Dana is my mentor and she is on the board for The Chinquapin School. She will help us get the word out to the board and get some tips from them. Dana works with communications and keeping relations with companies. She will be able to advise us on how to communicate with others. she will evaluate us on how well we communicate within our program.

Rob Christy: Rob is Robert's mentor, he is also part of the board and he will help us by evaluating us on our program. He will evaluate how effective our presentation is.

Welcome Wilson Sr. : Welcome will help us analyze all of the information, Robert and I gather with our interviews. He will evaluate the overall project.


In January we have to meet with Laura and the students she recommended us to interview. We have to meet with Frank Duffy, to discuss how we are going to actually start doing the project. Over the winter break we have to finish reading Three Cups of Tea.

My Job

As we progress with our project, I will call and email our contacts and talk to them about our project that we are trying to conduct. After confirmation that they'll assist us, I'll set up an appointment to begin our interviews with them. This is my individual job. Robert and I are both conducting research alone and separately. On Robert's blog, he'll describe his individual job.

Marc S. Nieto: Hispanic Institute

I have recently gotten in contact with Marc S. Nieto, he is with the Hispanic Institute. He helps Hispanic students do a lot of programs they would normally wouldn't be able to. He cares a lot about helping not so privileged kids. He wants to help Hispanic students explore new places to learn. He gives an opportunity to travel and learn in different environments. I think he can give a lot of input on his experience with students and traveling.

Talking to Molly Socha

A new idea came up as we talked to Molly Socha. She has experience with the Big Brother/Big Sister Program. She has given us ideas about how to be mentors and she told us that we should alter our project a bit. She said that having a summer camp would be better. A summer camp for not so privileged kids would be good. Then Chinquapin Students can tutor and mentor. They would have more time with the children and would have the chance to teach in other areas not just school related. It would be helpful to also teach the kids other things like art, soccer, volleyball, and tennis.

So far..

I have been talking to Lorian Welsh, she used to work with foster kids that needed help in education. She is going to advice me on how reach kids like this and help them with their problems. She has dealt with a lot of situations in where the kids have lost hope in their studies and lives because of their parents not being around. She has experience in this field of helping kids who don't have much succeed in the real world. I have talked to Tracye Anderson who works with the Big Brother/Big Sister program. She also has dealt with a lot of situations in which kids aren't so lucky to have everything being given to them. She has worked with kids that aren't that fortunate and have succeeded by motivation of a mentor.

Institution=Tutoring Center=Tutoring/Mentoring Program

Once Again the project has been adjusted to being a summer program for Chinquapin Students. The Program is for students that have interest in tutoring/mentoring younger kids. This program will allow Chinquapin students to go and tutor and help younger children with their school work and also with other issues that may be going on in the children's lives. This will provide the Chinquapin students to travel all over the U.S and help younger children who aren't so fortunate.

Research

So far on the senior project, I have decided to join with Robert Ramirez and work on a Tutoring  Center together. The research we have done is talking to organizations such as Big Brother/Big Sister organization and Sylvan tutoring organization. We were recommended to start reading Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin. We have schedule to interview Tracye Anderson, she is the head coordinator for the Big Brother/ Big Sister program with Houston. We have narrowed the Tutoring Center down to starting it only with Math being the only subject.

Institution=Tutoring Center

I watched a Tedtalk about a guy who started a tutoring center. Which is kinda close to what my project is. I watched some of the steps he took. He stated how he started a tutoring center and people were inspired by this to start their own all around the world.
<!--copy and paste--><object width="446" height="326"><param name="movie" value="http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"/><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><param name="bgColor" value="#ffffff"></param> <param name="flashvars" value="vu=http://video.ted.com/talks/DaveEggers_2008-stream-Clay_xxlow.flv&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/DaveEggers-2008.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=432&vh=240&ap=0&ti=233&introDuration=18000&adDuration=0&postAdDuration=0&adKeys=talk=dave_eggers_makes_his_ted_prize_wish_once_upon_a_school;year=2008;theme=words_about_words;theme=the_creative_spark;theme=ted_prize_winners;theme=how_we_learn;event=TED2008;&preAdTag=tconf.ted/embed;tile=1;sz=512x288;" /><embed src="http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf" pluginspace="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" bgColor="#ffffff" width="446" height="326" allowFullScreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" flashvars="vu=http://video.ted.com/talks/DaveEggers_2008-stream-Clay_xxlow.flv&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/DaveEggers-2008.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=432&vh=240&ap=0&ti=233&introDuration=18000&adDuration=0&postAdDuration=0&adKeys=talk=dave_eggers_makes_his_ted_prize_wish_once_upon_a_school;year=2008;theme=words_about_words;theme=the_creative_spark;theme=ted_prize_winners;theme=how_we_learn;event=TED2008;"></embed></object>
He tells us how he started but he doesn't really state how he got the money and how he got started. I would like to kinda shift my project more into being a tutoring center because after all it mainly is a place to study and have classes. If I switch my project to a tutoring center than it makes it easier because it would be helping kids not adding more classes/pressure/stress to them.The point of my project was to help those who are in need. The tutoring center will help out those who are in need. I also wanted to be able to communicate with a lot of people and through the process I am sure that this will happen.

Getting started

This all started with the Chinquapin School assigning a summer reading book to its upcoming seniors. This book is Drive by Daniel Pink. This book was the motivation for a project that will let the seniors do something they want and enjoy. I enjoy helping people and wanting to make my community a better place or any community a better place. At first I wanted to build an institution in Bolivia but that might be really hard. How can I start? I wanted to start by informing people of what I wanted to do . I would start an organization that provided information for everyone. At first I would start by doing a small fundraiser such as a small food sale. Then with money from that I would invest in more advertisement such as having a website. I would also start off with a Facebook page. The website will attract some people and some donors. From this a bigger organization will be formed. With a stronger, bigger organization I could reach all sorts of people that are willing to donate money and help me out. Little by little enough money and supplies will be provided to help me with my Senior Project.