Greetings from RISE at Stonebrook

Left: RISE students at Stonebrook examine their spectroscopes. Right: A former RISE student who is volunteering each and every day with new RISE students now that she is in high school.

We’ve just completed our second week at Stonebrook in the RISE program for the 2013-2014 school year! We have such a diverse group of students at our site this year, and the students are getting along great! It’s exciting to be in a community-based site where the kids have a strong sense of community, as well as preexisting friendships with their fellow students. Students range from age 11 to 14 and come from Nepal, Burma/Thailand, and Iraq. The atmosphere in our class has been very energetic and enthusiastic!

 In our first week of programming the students and volunteers spent lots of time getting to know one another and doing community building and bonding exercises. We have a student teacher, Haley, who comes every week to do science projects with the kids. The first week, the students made spectroscopes which break down light into rainbows. The second week she taught them a lesson about different types of rocks and brought some rare rocks for them to look at. In our first week during our enhancement time, the kids studied hip hop dance and learned a dance routine. This week, I’m working with the kids on prepositions and we have done many reading activities. I’m looking forward to all the fun activities we have in store for this semester!