Final Days

Throughout this crazy last high school year (senior) I have learned to be patient with so many things. I have this weird thing that when I have to wait for something then I get to urge to really have to go pee.  Throughout this project patience was one of the things that I had to have and developed. Working with some one like Robert helped a lot because he is a patient and more organized person than I am. He was a pretty good research person and that helped the project a lot. I am more of a hands-on person and well research is huge part to this. I don't think that without the research he did and the research he made me do this project would have been possible. The Tutoring program came out of many different ideas as you can see through my blogs. There were times where I had to read and reread a lot of things so that I can understand what Mentoring/Tutoring really is. The presentations were fun for because I enjoy speaking in front of people and this was the place where I felt comfortable and could show my hard work in. The best thing is to have an idea ready and just go with it. Our final product didn't really come until creativity week. It is a great thing to ask your teachers and talk to them about your projects because they will surprise you with their knowledge and ideas that they have. Many people in the class decided to do great things but they were too big. Many of our ideas were too big to put into action in just a year. Many of us had to readjust our schedules many times so that we can work on our senior project. It is a great experience and please do something that you are fully passionate about because if not you are stuck doing something that you are going to keep doing over and over again! I know at the beginning I wanted to do something with soccer, volleyball, tennis, and kids. I know I should've tried other things such as doing something like starting FFA for this school, or a volleyball tournament, or soccer camp.

April!One month to go!

The next step.! I still haven't found a place for the presentation. An idea came up that maybe we should combine it with the Chinquapin Alumni Association meeting which is next month in May. Robert and I are attending the meeting this wednesday which will be April 20. We will discuss our project with the Alumni since it does involve them. We have prepared a small presentation ready for the meeting on wednesday.

Planning.

This past month we have been trying to work on planning the date of our presentation with our panel. This is extremely hard because most of our panel is hard to reach. We need to have a set date and place. We are still waiting on replies for places. Our panel seems to be very cooperative but we need to get to work on getting everything planned. We have reached a bunch of places but we still haven't heard back. I know this is driving our teachers crazy because we don't have a set date and we are way past the due date to have a set date and presentation place. Hopefully everything turns out well. I will provide our TACKLE /tutoring program slide that we made.

Presentation Slide show!

February!

This month was crazy and good! This month the tutoring program has formed itself and evolved into something that will be more do-able. This month was a very busy month for this project. With the help from Susan, we discovered the way to help students virtually. We are going to use wiziq.com as a way to have Alumni tutor younger students. Whittier Elementary wants Robert and I to go back and work with the students again. It was a good week. We decided to name the project TACKLE which stands for Tutoring by Alumni Cultivating Knowledge, Learning&Education.

First Day of Creativity Week

Robert and I tried to work with wiziq.com. We launched several classes and experimented with the document sharing and screen sharing. We couldn't get one of the laptop's video chat thing to work. We talked to Francisco about giving us access to facebook so that we can create a group for our tutoring program. Facebook isn't working though for us. We will be talking to him again so that we can get these problems fixed. We sat and watched how some people did classes on wiziq.com. We attended some classes and observe how these teachers managed their classes.

WizIq..... Whats that?

Susan has came up to us with a great solution to our transportation problems and food problems. She has suggested that we do online tutoring. Online tutoring using wiziq.com, its a website that allows many members to make an account. With the online tutoring we wouldn't have to worry about feeding and transporting the students. We are thinking of having the tutors be the Alumni Association from the Chinquapin School. Coming up we have creativity week which will gives a lot of time to work on our project and master using the online tutoring. We will create an ad that will inform and invite people to use our program. The online tutoring is very tricky, we have tried it but we still have to play around with it to master it. The following is what we will be doing throughout this week.

Tuesday:
8-9 a.m: (Fan Room) We will be working on wiziq. We will try to learn about how it works, when it works best, when it is unable to work. We will need laptops.
9-11 a.m: Continue working on the wiziq. (Fan Room) We’ll take notes about the difficulties that we have.
11-12 p.m:Talk with Francisco about difficulties we have been having with wiziq.com. We’ll be in his office with the laptops.
12-1 p.m:Eating Lunch
1-3 p.m: We’ll continue working with our website. We will also be create a group on Facebook, where we will invite Chinquapin students to create their wiziq.com account. We will work on uploading our trailers and presentations to that facebook group. We will be in the Fan Room.
3-4 p.m:Blog about how the day went and how much we have done. Blog about this day to get our readers informed. (Fan Room)

Wednesday:
8-10 a.m: Practice using wiziq.com with each other. Continue jotting down the advantages and difficulties we have with this website. (Fan Room)
10-11 a.m:Research on any final difficulties that we have with wiziq.com. Figure out how to fix these. (Fan Room)
11-12 p.m: Master the usage of wiziq.com. With all of the notes that we will have written down we will create a how-to-guide, informing the alumni and students the steps of creating an account and using the website. (Fan Room)
12-1 p.m:Eat Lunch
1-2 p.m: Start thinking about what we want to say on our draft for our ad. Figure out the images we wish to use for this ad. Think about the font size. Font text. We will be in the Fan Room.
2-4 p.m: Contact our panel members and inform them how our project has changed. Ask them what date and at what time it will be the best time to meet with them for our senior presentations. (Fan Room)


Thursday:
8-9 a.m:We plan to have finishing touches on our draft to our ad. Fan Room
9-11 a.m: Once we finish our draft, we will meet with Francisco and start working on our final ad. This will take quite an amount of time to perfect our ad. Francisco’s office.
11-12 p.m: We plan to email our ad to the alumni and students. This will take a while because we need to figure out what goes where and who do they go to. We will have a paper copy to our ad to present to the students on Friday. Final touches on our FaceBook group. Fan Room
12-1 p.m:Eat Lunch
1-2 p.m:We will make sure that everything is ready for the presentation such as equipment and that our accounts are working. We will make sure we have everything we need for Friday.
2-4 p.m:We will practice our presentation for Friday. We will work on what we are going to say.


Friday:
We will show our ad that we created and briefly show students how wiziq.com works. We will need to be using a classroom. The fan room is a good place to do our presentation.

New Idea!

So a new idea came up because we were having problems with how we were going to transport the students from Houston to Chinquapin. The students will be selected from nearby schools such as Highlands Elementary and Hopper Elementary School. These students will have no problems with transportation since they live nearby. The program will be held during the summer. The student will be provided with lunch. We aren't so sure how we are going to feed them. We have been talking to people about being able to get free food for the students. We have been researching and looking at how Greg Mortenson raised money with his organization Pennies for Peace, Frank Duffy (panel member) is involve with this.

What I've Done

So far I have gotten Molly, Betsy, Dana, Rob, and Frank to become a part of my panel. Robert and I planned that each one will do something different but will have just as importance as each other. We are really excited to see how they will help us out. We scheduled an appointment with Frank last Tuesday but didn't meet with him because we weren't allowed to miss class. Now we will have to reschedule during the weekend or maybe this coming Monday. Something that Robert and I have in mind is having a time before the summer where students can actually come down to Chinquapin to get help with schoolwork and other problems. We want to know if our program will actually work out and this is one way to know if it does or not. If this doesn't work out, then we will at least know what we need to fix.

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.
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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.