Old School…bikes completed 24.

We’ve been busy working on a bike for the Arts Fair and students personal bikes. Sorry about the slow turn around. BUT we have been doing the Bike Depot thing and the students are in a good groove with completing a bike for other kids (through the Depot) and they complete them in about an hour or two. Neat to see the comfort level rise. Nice thing is is that one of our students will be doing a placement at a local bike shop.

Reminder…any old bikes feel free to call and we can pick them up.

Grocery Math

Had a student do some useful math today with our groceries. Trying to get this to build into something bigger and keep the students using useful tools on the ipad. 

Messages Sink In, a Bit Each Day.

Today’s lesson revolved, as often the case, around food. Large number of students that are doing schoolwork, exercising and refuelling themselves sometimes makes the cupboards bare. We sometimes do this on purpose as this is a common occurence for many of our students. The lesson that I posed to the students before I had a phone conference  with a social worker and probation officer, was “we have a bit of chicken, chickpeas, tomatoes, quinoa(cooked already), onions and 2 peppers. What can we do with this…use what you know and go to town”. I finished the call to find a great meal waiting. They made, bit of help from our practicum student, a stir-fry of sorts but flavoured the onion,chicken and chickpeas with the tomatoes.

After lunch, students did a workout and a little while after some students were complaining of getting the “shakes”. We discussed refuelling and had a student attempt another first. He ate apple and peanut butter, which seemed to really hit the spot. When asked he knew he was getting some protein, sugars and good fats from this snack. Getting messages to sink in, a bit each day. Pics of the WOD once our student emails them to me via his ipod touch.

ipod Changes Lives

A GREAT story over a 2wk period so far. A student wanted to start looking for a job. Obviously the first step was updating and polishing off his resume, then we did role-plays for interviews as well as what to say when handing resumes out. Before we send him out, we get him to make a list of places to go on his ipod(something he always has with him). In addition, one of them was a little hard to remember so he took a picture of the google map off the computer at school so he’d have the address and street names. Long story short, he gets a job as a result of that day.

Part two of the story, the youth gets his first cheque (keeps track of his hours on his ipod, which updates his google calendar) and promptly goes and spends it wisely, on tangible items(a little bit on poor choices). On the day of getting his cheque this youth talks to his mom and his mom tells him that he is the first family member to ever hold a job between all his 6 siblings. This young man stated that he was SUPER proud about this and is trying to make good use of his money. Fast forward a little to today and as the youth is doing his math (new gr.10 math) he is on percents and discount sale questions, the conversation turns back to spending his money wisely and how his ipod as given him so much ACCESS to things he didn’t have before, so we send him off to London Drugs for a field trip. This is what he produced, which is what he’s buying for his house. Now he feels more pride as he’s helping his ailing dad by contributing to the household.

Our next project is to put together a shopping list with “good prices” so this youth can help stretch the family budget. This youth does the shopping for the family and there are some months that are tighter than others. Funny how a simple little tool can not only change a single life, it can change generations to come.

3rd Annual G-3K run

Continuing to connect healthy food and exercise for our youth. 3rd annual event was booked for May 19. Look forward to positive #’s and positive participants.

Making impossible…possible

After completing day 1 of Foodsafe certification, some students returned back to school to do a WOD(workout of the day). Many of our youth struggle to NOT give up when things get difficult. Since we have introduced these high intense but short workouts, many of the students have transferred the skill of breaking larger tasks into smaller more achievable tasks or goals to other areas of their lives. Moreover, we have had many students that would have NEVER participated, asking for WOD’s each day, regardless of their choices the night before.

Best part is, no matter what, it always comes back to nutrition and eating healthy. Planning the growing season this week and what it may look like with Freshroots.

Building a new partnership

Since the planting season will be starting up soon we’ve decided to build a partnership with http://www.freshroots.ca/ which will help give more opportunity’s and enable our  students to plant gardens and reach out to our community.

G3K, teaching youth to move forward… 1km at a time.

2010 3k event

Since 2009 Genesis North East has organized and found funding for an annual 3K run that has each year had approximately 60-80 students and staff take part in this successful event at Trout Lake. Initially we were lucky enough to find grants that helped support the funding for 3K t-shirts(created by Genesis Broadway students), snacks and water for all participants. This year, we would like to use all available resources to make this a larger and more successful event.

What are we doing differently? We are hosting it in May…better weather is more likely to get the fair weather runners out. In addition, we are looking at providing some great draw prizes such as itunes cards, socks, water bottles, deoderants and other bits of cool schwag along with our SUPER cool G3k t-shirts. How can you help?

We are sending this out to 10 different departments within the VSB, MCFD and a few local businesses. Within your department we challenge you to raise enough money for 10 shirts. Thats ONLY $50 per department!! We would like  to have enough shirts to outfit 90-100 participants!

Someone from Genesis North East will regularly check in to see if we need to come and pick up the money and will issue your department a receipt.

THE EVENT: 3k Run

Time: May

Place: Trout Lake

SCHWAG: t-shirts (made by Genesis Broadway School), itunes cards and other gifts. FOOD and drink for all.

Spreading our roots

It’s funny how the universe works. If we haven’t seen a student for a while, we talk/think about them and they show up, and apparently it’s the same with gardening. We were talking/planning growing our seedlings indoors for January  and the next thing I know we are meeting with freshroots and trying to build a partnership with them and possibly other VSB programs. Lots to look forward to for the New Year.

Lunch at GNE

Ok, the summer was great…no posts but it was a great learning lesson for us. We know where our focus will be this spring and summer. We also learned that we need to be prepared to plant for the fall really quickly as we are busy getting back into the school groove.

Yes, we aren’t growing anything this fall, but that does not mean we are never teaching students the joys of veggies and the joys of cooking. This was created by a student when we asked him to cut some veggies for lunch and we asked that he make it look pretty/present it so that people will want to eat it. Needless to say, this was gone pretty quickly.