Second Day in New Orleans 6/17/08

Phrase of the day: Mystery Meat

Today, we returned to the school to revisit the ReThink campers, however instead of tuning into what they were doing we actually immersed them in the Globaloria program. The campers were introduced to their laptops and asked to create an HLife Wiki profile and for those who didn’t have email, email accounts. The vast variation in technological ability among the kids was apparent as some found it hard to type while others, especially some of the younger ones stayed on top of everything keeping up with Idit as she orchestrated the group on a laptop connected to a projector. The campers also wrote a little about themselves (age, name, grade, neighborhood, and any ideas they may have had). They were also led around the myhlife.org website and shown a few of the flash games and explained to why these games were not only fun and creative but also showed a sense of understanding of health—one game instructed that you would win points as you caught healthy foods such as apples while if you caught unhealthy foods in your basket you’d lose points. As the day continued, the kids then went on to participate in ReThink activities. One particularly interesting skit involved the campers role playing in different scenes that might take place in a New Orleans public school. The different scenes were a fight breaking out between 2 boys as one makes fun of the others clothes, the hardships students might go through in getting their lunches, and finally the trouble of looking for funding for any project a student might want to launch in school. After these skits were acted out, the campers were then asked to reenact them but now the audience filled with remaining kids was asked to yell freeze every time they thought the skit had reached a point where the situation would be different had the people in question—teachers, principals, students, lunch ladies—gone through the ReThink program. Suddenly, each was a very different story and the kids recognized this. The lunch ladies provided healthier and more appetizing choices, security guards weren’t as mean, and more help was provided to the students. After this activity, the campers were asked by the advisors what the word “hope” and “rethink” meant to them in terms of both their schools and their community—New Orleans. Answers were generally along the lines of rebuilding and pushing the schools and community toward a healthier, better, more tight-knit lifestyle. Throughout the entire thing, Noa and I both documented and helped the kids who needed more help than the others.

At the end of the day, the kids looked excited for their future in game making.