New Adventures, New People - Day Eight

I get to meet lots of interesting people-student nurses, doctors, professors, students (mostly from Case), and other seniors finishing their own senior project-while at Rainbow. I've become really close to the other volunteers on my floor, and we've sort of become a tight-knit community. One girl left last week because it was her last day for her senior project-so we were all sad to see her leave. She and I were the only ones who volunteered consecutive days. There are several other volunteers, but they all alternative every day and none of them are here all day like I am. So for the last week, I have sort of taken the reins in the morning and clean, organize, and put away all the toys and books in the playroom by myself. The other volunteers, when it's their day, usually come for 3 hours from 9:30-12:30.

The past 2 days, another volunteer has been here for the few hours. She and I put the kids in their strollers and paraded around Rainbow 6 floor. It was a blast, we all were waving and cheering as we past the nurses, and the kids loved all the attention! Just imagine 2 strollers with little kids in them, another patient in a wheelchair, and 2 volunteers finding joy and entertainment with their mini-parade.

Today, I met a student from Case. It was really interesting to hear all about her studies and how she wanted to take a few summer classes at Rainbow. As a junior, she's now deciding to major between engineering or pre-med. She thought it was really cool that I was volunteering for my senior project and wanted to hear all about my experiences at Rainbow. Of course, I said I've absolutely loved my project, and it's one of the most rewarding experiences I've had.

~Clare

A Visitor - Day Seven

I met Mr. Dlugosz on the first floor in the atrium this morning, smelling like bleach and clorox. That's because I had been cleaning toys that had not been washed over the weekend

Mr. Dlugosz chose the perfect day to come and visit Rainbow-it wasn't too slow, but it wasn't too busy on my floor. I basically gave him a very brief tour of my floor and daily routine and introduced him to one of the patients I have been playing with for the past few days. This boy loves to run, so Mr. D. and I chased after him around and around...and around the floor! I hope Mr. D. wasn't too tired. Mr. D. came on a pretty chill day, since I wasn't always occupied with crying babies--again, he was lucky! Most of the babies from last week were discharged over the weekend--yay!!!!!

Right after Mr. D. left, I had the most exciting adventure I've had on my project. I took an 18 month old patient (the on I had been playing with) downstairs to the atrium/cafeteria. This was so exciting because most of the patients on my floor are either too young, too fragile, or always sleeping. The little boy was absolutely thrilled to see something new and take a tour of the first floor of Rainbow. I pushed him around in his stroller and even took him to the gift shop, where he stared at the stuffed animals.

~Clare

A Week With Lake Metroparks

Last week Sarah and I worked with various departments of the Lake County Metroparks, helping to build trails and improve natural spaces and also learning about how they manage human access in their parks. Lake Metroparks has some very unique concerns in terms of the development and maintenance of its parks. As a publicly funded system, their job is to allow access to as many people as desire it,  and as a system with limited funding they have to carefully consider the cost of their projects. Guy Wagner, who was in charge of the Maintenance department we were working with, said that one of the ways that they have tackled these issues when they're developing parks is to put in an 8 foot wide road all the way through a property and build gravel and dirt spur trails off of it. This saves a lot of money and time during construction and maintenance of these spur trails, as they can drive almost any vehicle on these 8 foot trails. At  first we thought that is was strange that the system puts in 6 foot wide gravel trails almost everywhere instead of just using a well-made dirt trail, but then we learned that this was an effort to allow greater access for people with disabilities, and also that due to the high volume of foot traffic that many of the parks get, even the gravel paths are destroyed by people walking, and a dirt trail would be impossible to keep free of mud patches, and impossible to keep people on. The parks do have dirt and horse trails, which Guy says are by far the biggest drain on their maintenance efforts, as well as lots of boardwalks, which are constructed both to allow wheelchair access, keep people dry and to lower the impact that a trail has on an environment.


The trail that we were working on building was one of the 6-foot wide gravel trails, a very short stretch that runs to a small new campsite that people can rent. The park system has put in five other rustic campsites, which are rented out to a single group at $10 a night and stocked with free firewood, in an effort to bring more people into the parks and give them a new experience. The main reason for building a gravel trail to this spot even though the foot traffic to it will be relatively minor is so that they can deliver firewood in a vehicle.

 On our first day working with a trail building crew we learned just how much work it is to maintain parks in an area as big as Lake county; we met at the main maintenance building on Spear Rd in Painsville, and after the men we were working with loaded all the machinery that was stored there we drove to our site, which is connected by a stretch of 8-foot trail to Penitentiary Glen, and then had to wait around for about 20 more minutes while they drove into Pen Glen and came back by that trail with a Skid Skid. A big part of all of their jobs is driving, shuffling equipment and machines, and looking out and reporting what needs to be done at various parks and sites.

The new Lake Erie Bluffs park makes great use of boardwalks because they provide wheelchair access right up to the beach, allow the trails to go through wetlands instead of skirting around, and also ensures that people wont go off into areas that they have identified as fragile. The land was once slated for development, but after the recession the developer sold it, and the Metroparks have been slowly building trails to allow people to access this prime birding spot. We spent one day flagging the wetland areas of what will soon be a new trail, most of which will be boardwalk, which will indicate to the trail building crew where they should definitely be building boardwalk and also be careful to disturb the area as little as possible.

The Future Building of Friendship Circle

Friendship Circle is planning on making some big renovations to their building in the upcoming year, and I have been a part of the process of making those plans real.  Rabbi Yossi, the executive director of the organization, had some initial designs drawn up.  The biggest change that is happening is that they are building a simulated real life town.  There is one room, which now is called the sanctuary, that is a very large open space.  Next year, the plan is that this space will be transformed into what looks like a town.  Small spaces will be cut out and turned into different shops.  For example there will be a doctor’s office, a salon, a bank, etc.  What this does is it teaches the kids that Friendship Circle services real life skills.  Some kids may have difficulty seeing a doctor or getting their hair cut, and this simulated town will help them learn to be comfortable in those situations.

My role in this has been to lay out the preliminary designs onto the actual room so that we can see how much space we have and what this town will look like.  I have been taking the designs and scaling them up to match the real room.  Using a measuring tape and some masking, I laid out the floor plan of the future room. Hopefully in the next week or so, an architect that Friendship Circle ahs hired will come and see if this vision is possible.   

Hearts, Hand Turkeys, and Puzzles - Day Six

Today reminded me a bit like a day at the camp I work at every summer. I work with kindergarteners every summer, so their ages range between 4, 5, and 6. Today at Rainbow, I spent a while with a 4 year old girl. When I first met her last week, she was a bit shy, but today she loved company. I love children at this age, because they have such a fresh and vibrant personalities. All she wanted was to watch me put together all kinds of princess puzzles (Frozen, Cinderella, Princess Sophia, etc.)! We kept going from one activity to the next. It was so cute when she asked me to bring her exactly 7 pieces of colorful paper and exactly 7 markers. She had me draw big and little hearts to make for her family. I made a little family of hearts for her “daddy” from her. When she seemed finished with that, she immediately started to make “hand turkeys” with my hand. She got marker all over her hands and mine. She reminded me of my campers because there was never a dull moment. She kept jumping up and down on her hospital bed and onto the floor. It was quite entertaining, and it was really refreshing to play with an older kid since I had mostly been holding babies and toddlers last week.

~Clare 

Recruiting New Volunteers

One of the main projects I started taking on at Friendship Circle is the recruitment of new volunteers.  Me along with another senior from Orange high school who is also doing their senior project at Friendship Circle have been going to various Jewish day school to give a presentation about volunteering at friendship circle.  We have already had multiple presentations and have even more planned for this week.  The target audience of these are mainly eighth and some seventh graders.

            During the presentation we do two things.  The first of which is simply describing what Friendship Circle is like and how teens are able to get involved.  The second is doing various interactive activities with the middle schoolers to show them what it is like to have a given disability.  The activities are designed to represent a certain real world setting.  For example, one of the activities involves me saying a set of directions that a normal school teacher would say, such as stating a home work assignment, and the middle schoolers have to write down what I say word for word on a note pad, but they have to do it while looking at the note pad through a mirror.  Afterwards, many of the students comment on how frustrating and difficult that was, and how annoying it would be to have to do that all day long during school.  We then explain that for some children, who have dyslexia for instance, this is the process they have to go through all day.  This helps the middle schoolers understand what exactly a child with a certain disability goes through and allows them to connect to them when they volunteer at Friendship Circle. 

The Student Becomes the Teacher

Today was a fantastic and exhausting day at School of Rock. The new sessions have finally started, and I helped out the jam bands crew today. After my usual office work and the lessons I sit in on, the new students in the next series of shows got together for the first time. The director of this session is Joe, an avid fan of jam bands and other psychedelic rock groups.
In case you don't know, the point of a jam band is to jam. A jam band will briefly follow the the structure of a song before breaking off into solos and improvisation. A jam band will often stretch a song they play in the studio from five minutes up to half an hour. Some famous jam bands include The Allman Brothers Band, Phish, the Grateful Dead, and many other classic bands.
I served two major functions today. The first thing I did was help inexperienced student learn a riff in one of the songs. One of the songs, Joyful Noise, has this one riff that the rhythm guitar plays throughout the whole song. This student, Quinn, was having trouble getting the riff under his fingers so I walked him through note by note so he could pick it up.
The rest of the day was really fun as all I did was jam along with some other kids on the Allman Brother's Whipping Post, the ultimate jam band song. I helped them piece together the structure of the song, but it didn't feel like work to me, just a lot of fun.
I'm excited that I finally get to play music with these kids. If the rest of project is anything like today, I know I'll have a good time.