Bus 52

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From their use on television to their place in schools, puppets are often used to teach children. In Burlington, Vermont, Puppets in Education is using the fun aspects of puppets to help school children learn about and discuss difficult topics. Executive Director Deb Ward Lyons explains that the nonprofit, "travels throughout the state teaching children in grades K through 8 how to keep themselves safe and healthy and to appreciate each other's differences. We do this through engaging workshops and educational programs that use life-sized puppets." Now in its 31st year, Puppets in Education has a collection of 23 programs that, using puppets, educate young children about topics such as disabilities, illness, and abuse.  "The prompting for the beginning of this organization came from the parents and the educators who worked with children with different abilities and the idea of promoting inclusion for all," says Ward Lyons.  "It really was to help educate the peer group of the children who have different abilities so that they can learn better how to include and be friends with and play with children who are not typically developing."  Ward Lyons herself joined the organization in 1985, three years after its inception. She explains that, "Really my interest was in helping stop the cycle of abuse for children and then I figured puppets would be the most accessible way to get that information across to them." She and another mother at her children's school put together a curriculum and program that would address the topic of abuse, something which "was not a topic that was broadly talked about in schools."  Sadly, a few years after starting the abuse prevention program, Ward Lyons discovered that one of her own children was "abused by somebody in our neighborhood." "I became like this mom on a mission," says Ward Lyons. "I helped support my child and did everything that needed to be done to support our family and my child ... It really drove home to me how important it was. I didn't want this to happen to anybody else again, no kids, any parent to ever go through that." Ward Lyons thought that puppets would be a perfect way to broach such a difficult topic with children, staff, and parents alike. Abuse and its prevention were not being discussed enough and Ward Lyons was determined to make that change.  "Over a six year period," she says, "we tracked our abuse prevention program, and through offering 40 presentations for free to schools, we had over 90 disclosures of child abuse and domestic violence." Although she joined determined to change the way abuse prevention was being discussed, she places as much importance of the other 22 different programs that cover a multitude of challenges young children might face.  Everything that a child going through school could experience is addressed from creating friendships in school and fostering an understanding of disabilities and Autism Spectrum Disorders, to recognizing the signs of bullying and abuse in others.  "We have a program that talks about HIV and AIDS, children's mental health addresses ADHD and depression, and last year when Hurricane Irene came to Vermont and devastated much of our state, we created a new program to address that and talk to kids about the stress that that caused."  They even have a program that addresses divorce and one that discusses stereotypes of boys and girls, emphasizing that, "girls can be doctors and boys can knit." What makes the program so successful is not simply that they are taking the time and effort to speak with children about the difficult and heart-breaking challenges in their lives. The use of the life-sized puppets really does give them the perfect tool for making the children feel comfortable enough to address topics like bullying, disabilities, and abuse.  "When a child is in the audience and they're listening to this puppet character and role-modeling this and explaining a lot of the same feelings that they're having also, they just start speaking right to the puppets and talking to them and telling their story."

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Deciding to get fit is an aspiration for us all. Actually following through and consistently working out is a very different matter. Two guys from Boston started planning workouts and one year later, an average of 200 people show up to workout with them. As rowers, Bojan Mandaric and Brogan Graham were no strangers to tough fitness regimens but when they decided to start an exercise schedule to keep themselves fit throughout the winter, they had no idea it would result in group workouts that now attract hundreds of people. Talking over a beer one day, the two college friends decided that to ensure they kept up with their usual health regimen through the cold Boston winters, they would become each other's personal coaches.  Mandaric explains that, "It's kind of hard to get your butt out of bed when it's cold out, dark ... so we basically decided to create a schedule, a training schedule, that we'll be holding ourselves accountable for and motivate each other to get out of bed." "We don't like working out, it's just the other dude's going to be there," Graham elaborates, which is exactly the motivation they needed to get themselves out of bed to train on the cold and dark winter mornings in Boston.  The two started their regimen in 2011. "The whole thing was just about trying for a month to set a pattern," says Graham, "so if we can do this in November, we'll probably be able to take it through the winter. So we said Monday through Friday every morning, just for the month of November, hence November Project, and that's exactly what happened."  As they worked through their November routine, they started blogging and tweeting about their early-morning accomplishments, which led to an ever-growing following.  "In May, we opened up to the public," says Mandaric, "and then people seemed to like us, like the personalities, like the people that they're working out with, and they keep coming back."

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he game of squash is fun, exciting, and challenging, both physically and mentally. For middle school children in Newport, Rhode Island, an after-school program based around squash is helping them to improve their physical fitness and academic results. The organization's Executive Director, Kerry Bidlack, explains that, "Rhody Squash is a nonprofit after-school program helping disadvantaged youth ... through squash and academic tutoring to succeed and to get into independent high schools and colleges." Three days a week during the school year, usually from early October to late May, children from Thomson Middle School, the only public middle school in Newport, attend Rhody Squash at the facilities at St George's school. "We have 12 middle school students from fifth grade to eighth grade," says Bidlack. "They spend an hour on the squash courts then they spend an hour with a pretty much one-on-one academic tutoring situation."
 This is Rhody Squash's first year partnering with St George's, says Bidlack. The program was previously run at the Newport public squash courts but working at St George's gives the program an extra edge. "This is actually the first alliance of its kind for an urban squash program to be teamed with an independent high school," explains Bidlack. "It's really an awesome opportunity for the kids to get a glimpse into a future that they can achieve through working hard, through a program like this." The goals of the program are two-fold. The first is to ensure that children who need some additional academic assistance are getting the help they need. During their one our of study time, the students are able to work on their homework and, if they need it, get help from the tutor on duty. Rhody Squash also provides tutors for students out-with program time and even during the summer to help students improve their grades. Academically, the children all benefit from the time and attention they receive from the program. "You could do your homework so you won't have to do it at home, you could have more free time. You get help if you need help, there's never any reason for them to do anything else, they're always there to help you," says ten-year-old Collin. For Lucas, age 14, Rhody Squash has challenged him despite having played many sports before. "Squash was something new for me and it's very challenging and it demands a lot of you physically and mentally. And educationally it has helped." He continues, explaining that "Rhody Squash actually provided me for a tutor for summer for math because I hate it, I'm really bad at it, and so that definitely helped me. Right now I have an A in math, in algebra, which is amazing." "It's a great sport as well but they're also getting that extra time to sit down, get homework done that they might not be able to do that at another after-school ... program," says Bidlack. Lilly, age 11, enjoys the program because it will open doors for her. "It keeps you really fit and it's really good for you. It's just a fun thing to do, it's a great sport to learn and you can get scholarships to places so it's a really good sport." Historically, squash has been a more elite sport, and is now often played at independent high schools and colleges. Rhody Squash hopes to give their students the chance to present an attractive application to any school they wish to apply to, and the addition of squash can certainly add to their application. Pete Avitable, Rhody Squash's Director of Squash, explains that, "Primarily, squash is played at private schools, at private clubs, some businesses but up to now there really hasn't been a public avenue to get involved ... By providing kids with squash education, you open up a lot of doors socially and in business and in education that are very tough to get to otherwise."

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Last day at Bus 52 HQ! Getting ready to go!

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For animal lovers the country over, the thought of losing a beloved pet does not bear thinking about. When a pet does go missing, people are often unsure of how they can find them. This is exactly why Anne Wills founded Dogs Finding Dogs based in Baltimore to help people through the process. 

“It all first started with the purchase of my canine, Heidi, as a puppy,” says Wills. “She was very high drive, out of control, needed training. My boyfriend at the time was a police officer. He said 'I'll tell you where to go train, let's go where they do auxiliary training.'”

After training Heidi to an extremely high standard and entering her into contests, Wills discovered that Heidi was an excellent scent tracking dog. 

She knew that the police frequently received calls about lost pets, asking if the canine teams could help track the missing animals. As Wills knew, however, the police “do not let their dogs track anything other than human scent.”

This meant that Heidi was “the next best choice” and after being called out many times over a period of a few months, Wills says she thought, “okay, this is fun, my dog's got training, we're helping people, let's do it for real.”

After gathering some friends who also owned trained dogs and advertising a little, Wills found herself so swamped by calls for help from pet owners that “within 6 months, I had to quit my full-time job and form this as a non-profit.”

Wills describes Dogs Finding Dogs as “a nonprofit that does canine search and rescue for missing pets. We find anything and everything that walks on the ground using highly trained canines.” 

Though it is quite a jump to go from doing the work part-time to creating a fully fledged donation-based nonprofit. Wills explains that the motivation came from the people she was helping. 

“When you get into a situation of losing a lost pet, you're so frantic that you can't think. You don't know all of the alerts that can be done, the way you need to spread the word, even to how to begin to look for your pet. So seeing how well we were helping folks and how appreciative they were, that was what made us decide to get serious and really form a huge organization that could do this all the time.” 

Since forming as an organization in 2008, they have rescued over 4000 pets, which having been called to find more than just missing dogs after they’d expanded, have included cats, horses, tortoises, and even people. 

Each case is different, says Wills. It can range “from somebody left the door open and the gate blows open, the dog or cat runs out and gets missing, to somebody has physically come in and stolen your pet. We've had home invasions, we've had people stealing them right out of fenced yards.”

Dogs Finding Dogs works together with the pet owner to put together a plan of action as soon as they hear about the missing pet. 

“We will immediately sit there for as long as it takes with someone on the phone to analyze the situation and give them an immediate action plan to do. And it's hand-tailored to whatever their unique situation is. We do tell them that we can take their case on and how we work with the canines and give them the option as to whether they'd like us to come out or not.”

Wills explains that the volunteer canine teams are not always sent out immediately because each case requires a different approach. When the dogs are needed, “The first thing that I do, is I match up the right dog for the right job,” says Wills. 

“There are some dogs that do terrific on concrete, there are some that do terrific after it's been raining for a while, there's some that are better for cats than for dogs. If they're not raised with a cat, they don't go out for a cat because we want to make sure that there's a happy ending.”

Once they’ve arrived at the animal’s last know location, they get the dog to pick up the pet’s scent using an object. “It could be a bed, could be a toy, could be a food bowl, little bit of fur, it doesn't take much, and we will scent a canine up at the last known spot that the pet went missing from.”

“From there,” explains Wills, “they follow the footsteps out and we look and see where this goes.”

The end of the scent trail will not always result in finding the animal immediately. “We as human beings hope that where [the dog] says it ends that the pet is there but that's not always the case. It could be that it ends in a weird area where it looks like [it] was picked up off the ground.”

The animal could also have started looping around the area while finding somewhere to sleep, “so we know that the dog or the animal is probably in that area.” 

“And now let's develop an action plan of what we're going to do to stop this animal from moving and usually it involves a lot of food and a lot of familiar smells of the folks that they know.”

Catching the animal becomes a waiting game that sometimes involves trapping the pet in a large kennel run. Most importantly, the members of Dogs Finding Dogs do all they can to make sure their clients remain as calm as possible. “We develop an entire action plan and we stay with our clients from beginning to end.”

Using their knowledge of their well-trained dogs as well as an understanding of the patterns and habits of lost animals, the Dogs Finding Dogs teams have an excellent track record, though the time it takes to find the pet varies from case to case. 

“Some cases we get them solved in five minutes. Some it's a week. Some could be five weeks. We just solved one this week and got a pet home after 2 years of chasing a dog around the countryside so we stick with them to the bitter end and we run about a 92-94% success rate.” 

The difficulties that come with tracking a lost animal are many, says Wills. Elements like time, weather, and terrain can all play a different role in the retrieval of the missing pet, as well as the type of animal concerned. 

“The challenges that we face on a daily basis is number one how quickly have somebody called us and what type of animal is it. Sometimes, it's not a bad thing that we're called two weeks later because it gives the animal time to settle down and stay in an area but then sometimes it works against us.” 

Knowing the behavior of the animal that is missing is very important in helping to find it. “The difference between a cat gone missing versus a dog versus a tortoise, for example, or even a horse, is how much ground can they cover and what are the characteristics known to that type of animal.” 

Wills explains that, “A dog for example is going to travel much more distance than a cat. A cat is a more territorial animal and they usually stay within their territory and if they wander out, they get lost. The tortoise, who knows? The tortoise just hits the ground and toodles off. However, it can make some good distance. We had one that went as far as an indoor cat would go.” 

While most cases are of a dog having run away or escaped through an open gate, Wills says that “45% of all of our dog cases do wind up stolen,” something that has surprised her greatly. 

“If it was them that lost their personal pet, they wouldn't like it and that to me is what is so extremely surprising. uJst day after day, every week, we're getting 3 in 4 cases a week that are stolen pets.”

When the team finds out that the pet was stolen, “That's an entirely different game that we have to play,” says Wills. “It's not so much a tracking effort as it is a manipulation effort to try to get these people to tip their hands. We become more police detectives and we work with the police and pull them in on these cases with us.”

No matter what the circumstances that surround each case, rediscovering the pet means the world to the owners, especially for the people for whom to “lose their pets, it's like losing a child, they are that crushed and they need help.”

One such pet owner, Pat Brooks, explains that, “They gave me hope that I would find him and when they gave me instructions about how dogs usually run away, what they do, and each time [Wills] listed things that would happen, it happened. Where she’d said he’d go, when would reappear, all the things she knew about the dogs proved to be true and that gave me hope.”

Over the years, the way Dogs Finding Dogs works has evolved to include finding more pets but it has also grown to include the use of horses as part of the search teams. 

“We have the luxury of having two horseback teams,” Wills explains, “and these horses are a tremendous, tremendous blessing to us because we get into environments like the State Parks, farmland that a person on the back of a leash with a dog cannot necessarily catch up with an animal that has no obstructions to slow it down.”

With the help of the horses, they can cover far more ground and thus help to find even more missing pets. 

For Wills, she is constantly astonished by the tracking dogs’ ability to pick up scents, even in seemingly impossible scenarios. 

“We have situations where there's a lot of water involved, for example. What's surprised me is to see a dog track two inches on top of a creek, following the scent because the animal walked up the creek. That to me is astonishing that these animals can pick that up, can pick the scent up floating on the water.” 

All the work that Wills puts into the nonprofit, an idea she loved enough to leave her job for, is for the owners and the reunion that she and her teams make possible. 

“The reunion is priceless, it'll make you cry ... To see the relief of handing that pet back to the person who has been through so much trauma ... and to see the pet, the pet will show the happiness too, 'oh my gosh, I'm back'.” 

“There's nothing better. It's absolutely priceless. And to know that your dog that you have trained so hard with, that you love just as much as they do, was instrumental in this reunion, is such a big feeling of pride. It's a great feeling and people are so appreciative and every client we had is a friend now.”

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#Early start to our last day on @Bus52! We're headed to @CBSthisMorning and then #home to DC! What a year!

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"How is anyone going to want to invest in this community if all we're presenting are the bad things that are happening here?" The Fairhill neighborhood of North Philadelphia is one that has been stigmatized by the media and labeled 'The Badlands'. But residents of the area don't want the bad to be all that anybody living there, or not, knows about.  The Goodlands is a project aimed at completely changing the views people have of their own neighborhoods, starting with those members of the community who have the most power and energy to change the way everyone sees their neighborhood: children.  Angela Jubinville is the Executive Director of Centro Nueva Creción, the nonprofit under which The Goodlands operates. She explains that the program "started as a photography program for elementary aged kids. We do digital photography with children, usually neighborhood based photography but it spans all kinds of genres." Created as part of the New Creation Lutheran Church in 1995, Centro Nueva Creación was the reaction to a survey conducted by the church that asked "What is the thing you want for the community?" Jubinville explains that, "a huge resounding answer was 'we want to make the neighborhood safer, we want to make it more beautiful, and we want to engage the young people. So that's how the out-of-school-time program started, the after-school, and the summer camp." In 2000, "The then director of the Center, which was also the pastor of the church, decided to create The Goodlands in response to this labeling of the neighborhood as The Badlands."  The name itself was chosen as a direct opposition to the stigmatization of the area with the aim of highlighting the positive qualities of the neighborhood.  Now its own nonprofit since 2005, Centro Nueva Creación was extremely pleased by the success of The Goodlands and as such, decided to keep the program going.  The program serves "a very poor community," says Jubinville. "Most of the children receive free or reduced lunch. That's how we gain our information. Most families receive some sort of benefit ... Most of our kids are struggling academically either in reading or writing or just across the board and that's typical of [their] school." The families the children come from are often single-parent ones of a Latino background where the language spoken between family members is Spanish. This means that parents are sometimes unable to help their children with their homework. The programs at Centro Nueva Creción aim to support the children for whom this is a problem by working on their literacy skills both by helping with their homework and by using photography as a way to explore vocabulary and visual literacy. The children also have a poetry class once a week that helps them exercise putting their emotions into words.  The Goodlands works with "sixty kids in kindergarten through fifth grade," says Jubinville. The group is split into more manageable class sizes who each participate one day a week.  The after-school program runs from "3 to 6 pm Monday through Friday during the school year," explains Jubinville. "They have a snack for about a half hour then they run around a play for maybe 15 minutes and then depending on the day, they'll either start by doing their homework for an hour and then have an enrichment activity afterwards or they'll do the enrichment activity first and do homework afterwards."

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Filming today with @PiEKOBVT - its amazing to see the great work of #Puppets in #Education

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With more and more resources being cut from public school systems across the country, students are becoming increasingly likely to drop science from their work load as they move from middle school to high school. In order to combat this, the Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Partnership was founded to help schools in Buffalo, New York rekindle students’ interest in science. 

Joseph A. Gardella, Jr. had long been “a Buffalo public schools parent activist, especially in special education,” when he was approached by people who asked him whether he would interested in looking into and helping science education in Buffalo public schools. 

His background in science and his position as the John & Frances Larkin Professor of Chemistry at the University at Buffalo, lent him the perfect angle from which to address the problems. 

The problems that are facing Buffalo schools, much like public schools across the country, are many. “I think Buffalo is the now fifth poorest city in the United States,” says Gardella. “The schools have very high needs, low graduation rates.”

With regards to science and engineering education, Gardella explains that, “the transition from middle school to high school is where students disproportionately lose interest in science and engineering as a potential thing that they can do with their lives or having to do with a career.”

In order to engage children in the sciences, Gardella oversaw the creation of the Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Partnership – a partnership between local public schools and the surrounding universities and colleges – of which he is now Director. 

Gardella explains that ISEP is “a program that links the professional development of teachers to increase their knowledge about science and engineering in particular interdisciplinary science and engineering, which is really the way science and engineering is done at the research and manufacturing levels these days.”

In essence, in order to increase the chances of engaging students at a middle school level, ISEP provides the resources for teachers, such as funding and research positions, that allows them to further engage their students. 

“It's to increase their knowledge but also to give them the resources in the classroom to actually implement that knowledge and so both the teachers and the students get more experience with the actual hands-on work of science and engineering,” says Gardella.  

The pilot program ran for approximately seven years in two Buffalo public schools before the program was expanded to include twelve schools in 2011. The premise had to be tested thoroughly before it could be implemented on a larger scale. 

The schools they have expanded into were carefully chosen on the basis of performance and need. “We're really much more at the grassroots level,” says Gardella, “so we identified schools that ... by these performance measures, are struggling. Yet we know in every one of these schools, there are students that are capable and are not necessarily surrounded by the resources to help them perform.”

Working on the basis that students are most likely to lose interest in the sciences during their transition from middle school to high school, ISEP was determined to encourage students to choose they high schools based on a program they find exciting.


“We chose schools strategically on the basis of developing programs in the high schools that are attractive to students leaving middle school and choosing high schools,” explains Gardella. 

Buffalo’s public school system is “a complete choice district meaning that there are no traditional geographic feeder schools. Students can apply to any high school and ideally you would like them to go to that high school because there's a program that they're interested in.”

This gave ISEP the idea to encourage teachers in middle schools to build relationships with teachers in high schools in order to connect the work done at the lower level with future opportunities at high school level. 

For example, Burgard High School has excellent welding and automotive technology programs. If teachers in middle schools are aware of these programs, they can encourage students interested in those fields to choose Burgard as a continuation of that interest. 

The work begins with the teachers who “spend time during the summer doing research projects,” says Gardella. But far from simply lecturing the teachers in research, “We really expect that teachers' work product from that research to be new things they can implement in the classroom with an emphasis on hands-on work.”

“It’s one of the first ventures into a true interdisciplinary program,” says Burgard Physics teacher and Science Coach, Bruce C Allen. What they’ve been used to “in the past has been to separate science from other disciplines including things like engineering. What we’re doing here now, instead of keeping one in one corner and one in the other, we’re bringing them together and showing the students how these subjects interrelate.”

Brian Wiesinger, the Principal of Burgard High School says that, “In an urban school district, we sometimes struggle with kids coming to school ... We need them here so that they can learn, they can graduate, and one of those draws is something that is a little out of the ordinary. Instead of just sitting in a classroom for six or six and a half hours a day, here they’re up, they’re moving, they’re participating, and again, taking control of their own learning.”

This means the teachers gain the opportunity to work on research they might never have seen before and gain “a more practical experience about the day-to-day ups and downs of doing science and engineering work,” Gardella explains. 

With 64 teachers attending “various authentic research and educational opportunities to build their experience level” this summer, ISEP is gaining a great deal of positive involvement from teachers across the schools they work in. 

Far from underestimating the teachers, ISEP takes full advantage of the teachers’ creativity and experience in the classroom to take what they learn during their research sessions and transform it into an engaging classroom experience. “We're counting on the teacher innate abilities,” says Gardella.

The research and financial resources mean that teachers can provide a much more hands-on class that is more likely to engage students, giving them a real-world example and value to what they are learning. 

It’s “inquiry-based science so instead of a recipe or a white sheet of paper with a bunch of lines to fill in, it's to get students and teachers active, just as they would be if they were doing science in a research laboratory or in a manufacturing or industrial site.”

Iviangelisse, a 17-year-old high school student says that, “people just think you go fast just because you go fast. That’s not the answer to everything. There’s always got to be a scientific explanation for something or some sort of explanation and I think that physics really helps you understand exactly the nitty gritty of it.”

One of the most important resources ISEP can give to the teachers are the human resources they provide in the form of “graduate students, faculty involvement, and undergraduate students in the classroom so that they can implement these things in the kind of ways that the best inquiry science teaching is done at the college level,” says Gardella.  

Partnering with universities and colleges gives the schools the chance to invite students in to assist in teaching the classes and giving them any advice, encouragement, and mentoring the children might need. 

As Gardella puts it, “our students can speak to high school and middle school students in a way that a 57-year old, gray-bearded guy cannnot.” The addition of young and energetic college students in the classroom can help give the middle and high school students the motivation and self-belief they need to get to college themselves. 

ISEP Graduate Assistant, Lavone Rodolph explains that, “it really engages their interests and that’s what we really want to do. We want to captivate their interests at an early age. If we can get the children or the students asking questions at an early age, they’re more likely to investigate those questions and they can do it in a theoretical or a practical way.”

The success of the program has surprised Gardella – knowing that the program worked on a small scale, in just two schools, did not guarantee the success across more schools. 

“I twist no arms in order to get collaboration,” says Gardella, “and we built a really strong network of collaboration to support this so I'm very passionate ... I, like many people in the United States, believe that if we don't deal with school children at the middle school and high school age in high needs districts, both urban schools and rural schools, we're just leaving out a huge fraction of our population from living a good life in America.”

WIth a vicious cycle of low supply and demand, the excitement for science is fast leaving Buffalo high schools. “Out of the 16 high schools in Buffalo,” says Gardella, “there are only 6 that teach physics, so physics isn't taught in a lot of high schools here because it's viewed that students aren't going to take enough science to make that as an opportunity.”

This is what ISEP is determined to change and by linking the study of science and engineering in middle school with exciting programs being offered in high schools, it is succeeding in gaining and sustaining students’ attention. 

ISEP’s strengths come from the fact that it provides the schools and teachers with the much-needed resources but lets those who know the children best – the teachers and principals – work on how best to use those resources. 

“It demands on the teachers and the principals to come up with a vision to move forward and the school district leadership then buys into that,” says Gardella, something that ensures the passion and drive of all involved.  

The community, from the middle and high schools teachers to the university faculty and students, really has rallied around ISEP and the work they are doing. 

“For me, the two things that are most joyous for me are the results of having graduate students and undergraduates in the classroom. That is far beyond what I envisioned – the passion that the students bring to working in the schools” says a delighted Gardella. 

“The second part is that faculty in colleges and universities for whom there's very little very clear reward system for doing this, have come to me to say, 'I've heard about your program, this is really important and I want to be part of it'" and they will take extra time and go the extra mile.” 

Gardella’s passion for engaging more and more students in the world of science and engineering is evident from the work he has put into ISEP and his dedication is due to the deep-seated idea that anybody can be good at science if they get the chance and the encouragement they need. 

“I'm of the type of scientist that believes that everybody can do science ... it doesn't work when we think of it as an elitist enterprise and what I want every student to feel is, 'I can be successful at doing science and my own background, and my own interests and my own ability to ask questions are important. They're relevant and it makes a difference in the other things I do in my education, and gives me a passion for thinking about a career.’”

“I think the difference is that we're trying to introduce what might be considered very sophisticated projects but linking that to goals that are evaluated so that students see that doing science isn't showing up at a classroom and listening to a lecture and filling in a sheet of paper.”

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"Everything about a power tool says 'no' to a girl... It says 'power', it says 'capable', it says 'big and strong and men'. So you take this little girl that's been abused or neglected or abandoned and you take a power tool and you put that in her hands so now what happens." For most young girls, the idea of using a drill press, electric sander, or branding iron is not the first thing that comes to mind when they think of their skills. Girls At Work is a New Hampshire nonprofit based in Kingston that is working to change that, giving girls the knowledge and tools to build their strength and courage as well as a peg board or box.  Coming from a family of five brothers and no sisters, Elaine Hamel was used to being able to do whatever her brothers did but when it came to her desire to join shop class, she was told she couldn't because she was a girl.  Later, when she left college to pursue a career in construction, it took going to countless companies before she could find a job where she was accepted.  So when asked why she started a nonprofit that teaches young girls, usually aged from six to fourteen, how to build using power tools, she says, "The reason, I guess I focused on girls is because I never had that opportunity." The idea for Girls At Work came to Hamel 27 years ago when she took in a neighbor whose parents were addicts. Having done so, she explains that, "It occurred to me that I needed to put her in summer camp ... which baffles me because I'd never been to camp." After speaking to the local Girl Scouts' office and finding a camp, she signed her young neighbor up.  "At the time I was a general contractor, very young general contractor and struggling contractor," says Hamel, "so in order for me to get her into this camp, I had asked if there was anything I could do in exchange ... as opposed to paying for the program." When the camp leaders discovered she was a contractor, they asked her to teach the girls how to build. "So I loaded a bunch of tools and off I went to camp and I spent the week," says Hamel, not realizing at the time that it would be an experience that would change the course of her career.  "The first day they got there just after breakfast and they worked until about 10 or 11 that night and they wanted to work through each meal. And every morning they would get there before breakfast and just be in that space because it was so powerful for them." Hamel then started to teach at camps between contracting jobs but she explains that, "Then it just got too crazy, I felt like I was letting down more kids than I was helping." It was during time years later spent building a set for a local production of The Sound of Music that Hamel met two students of an economic development program at the local college. "They needed a pilot program to submit as a business plan and it all sort of happened through conversation," says Hamel, who spent hours talking to the students about teaching girls to build.  They set up a business plan for a nonprofit that would mean that Hamel could help more girls and, "We were one of three that were chosen, so I got a check in the mail." Hamel spent the next year planning the organization of the nonprofit and in 2000, Girls At Work was founded.  She explains that the mission of Girls At Work is to "teach girls at risk how to use power tools safely and through that experience, they'll discover their inner power tools of strength and courage, and it really alters their lens of how they see themselves." Girls At Work partners with local social services to find girls most in need of help and takes their programs to them, arranging building projects after school or during summer camps. 

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Spending nine days on a 52-foot-long sail boat might seem like an exotic adventure accessible to few children but Heart of the Storm is giving teenagers the chance to sail the waters and explore the communities off the coast of Maine.  No matter a child's financial status, Heart of the Storm wants to give them the chance to experience their program that helps them connect with their peers, community, and most importantly, themselves.  Nielsen van Duijn, Co-Founder, explains that, "Heart of the Storm is a program that is designed for youth. We're trying to get to the financially disadvantaged youth, the kids that would ordinarily not be able to get out on the water and that's an all-inclusive group." He continues, emphasizing that, "Kids can come out on the boat if they have money or if they don't have money, we're just trying to get local kids out on to the water to give them an opportunity to learn about themselves and learn about the environment." The goal of the program is to connect with teenagers in the local community of Blue Hill and its surrounding areas. While these may not be children who are at risk of failing grades and leaving school, Heart of the Storm works with teenagers who might otherwise fall through the cracks; those who appear, from the outside, to be perfectly happy but who could be going through more than they are sharing.  "During the teenage years, we feel like it's turbulent, it's a turbulent time, there's a storminess in kids, and so we want to kind of go to the heart, to that center place because in the center of the storm is where the calm is," says Christina Montano, Co-Founder.  Van Duijn and Montano want to show each and every child that they are important and that there are people around them who can help no matter what situations they are going through. 

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A goal we’d like to share: “Say one kind thing to everyone you meet today.”

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#goodstuffhappens

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Starting our day out #strong with the @Nov_Project #workout #fitness #letsmove

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Lights, camera, #action! Watching the Marblehead Youth News

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Snowing! Heading up to Marblehead for a shoot this afternoon - In Boston early tomorrow morning!