Week 6 (8/19-8/23): Roots and Fruits

This week, the seedlings of a project began to take root. I spent Monday fostering what I anticipate will be a fruitful and recurring relationship with Post-It Notes and whiteboards. At the suggestion of Manuelito, I created a wall of color-coded Post-Its that represented Gardner Center Research, Redwood City 2020 Partner Organizations, Redwood City 2020 initiatives, target population and issues (e.g. poverty, obesity, chronic absenteeism, etc). It looks like the world’s easiest and most colorful puzzle right now, but eventually, I hope to move all the Post-Its around to help visualize strategies for addressing, say, health and fitness, by taking the relevant Post-Its and seeing how different combinations can interact with each other. This can help generate new questions and relationships among populations, issues, and resources (e.g. does early intervention in fitness for low-income children make more of a difference than a later fitness intervention?). After I brainstorm as many questions about as many issues as I can, I can start weeding out the more implausible ideas (“Have Arnold Schwarzenegger come and teach a fitness class”) and focus on the more practical ideas (“Have a community member teach a culturally-relevant fitness class”). 

The rest of the week was a standard week until Friday, when I went with Pat and Jana to Shinnyo-En USA, the head temple located in Redwood City. We had a really good lunch around a conversation about Redwood City 2020’s role in partnering with the Shinyo-En Foundation and vice versa, with an emphasis on my fellowship. I also got to see many people I had met on the Annual Retreat, so it was great seeing them again. Seeing the temple was very inspiring, and very calming; it was so grand, yet simple. We left with a greater understanding of the Shinnyo-En Foundation, as well as full stomachs and fuller hearts. 

We said goodbye after the tour, so I went to work from home until Nuestra Escuela which started at 4 that afternoon. Nuestra Escuela is essentially an open house for the parents of Hoover Community School. I had been invited to come by Elena, the Hoover Community School Coordinator, when I toured the school in the week before. This was my first real experience with this aspect of community schools: family engagement. And boy were they engaged! When I was a kid, parent involvement meant driving a car full of kids to the museum or something because we didn’t have school buses. But here, parents were taking a very active role: they were hosting stations (“Parent Education” and “What is a Community School?”), leading groups from station to station, and generally helping other parents find their way around the school. It was really cool to finally see this thing that I had read about for a month in action. I hope to come back during a school day and observe how the community school works on a day-to-day basis, but, for now, it feels good to have these roots in the ground. 

So, all in all, things are starting to feel more concrete. I have a few roots grounded in a few different pots of soil (projects, Gardner Center, Redwood City 2020, the Redwood City community). I hope to keep watering and nourishing this flower of a fellowship (flowership?) so that, by the end of it, there is very tangible fruit. Though there is sure to be winter ahead, I’m confident that I can come out of it smelling like roses.