Wednesdays at Newcomer High School

A Testimonial from Minh




I think summer cycle tutoring at Newcomer High is pretty good so far, and it even gets better in the following weeks. In the first day of my work site, we tent to give students general idea of what regular high school is about since some of them are going to transfer this fall semester, but it turned out that we- tutors- were only from Lincoln High and Galileo High, so we changed the lesson plan into the similarities and differences between high school here and in their home cities. Besides that, we played a lot games with the students in order to get to know each other. I think that section was not bad for the first day with totally new tutors, except me lolz. I asked Ivan- Salvador- whether he liked it or not, and he said he enjoyed it, and that was definitely our success.The second week, we went to field trip at Exploratorium. There were fewer students than last week :(, but they all had fun whether they had been there before or not. (I had fun too, haha ) The third section, which means this week, we had less students than the second week :((. We had only five students :((. We all decided that we was going to tell them about "Suicide Prevention", however my group at VYDC said that they weren't ready, so we had to change the lesson (again) into Richard's idea about giving them a guide of what to do and where to go that are so cheap and even free, but still cool. The section was so good and everybody went home with smiles on their faces. And this is all because the NHS-Wed group is so awesome (and I will tell you about them after this paragraph :) ). Also , we played "two truths and a lie" and "musical chairs" with the students. I was so glad to see the students really tried their best to say in English without tutors'help of translation. Next week, the last week, we are going to Chinatown after everybody voting since some students have never been there before. Being honest, I would like to take them to Downtown, but that was their choices , so we respected that. We decided ourselves about this field trip, because the Tue-group having field trip next week , so why can't we ??? In brief, this summer cycle has been really really good. You can ask whoever works on Wednesday how they think about the cycle, and I bet you will hear the same answer.

And about the Wed- group, I like them a lot. I like everyone, Ian, Vivian Tam, Vivian Tong, Richard, Bernie, Najah, Rahul and Nawaz. They really DO things and COME UP with idea for lesson planning. They make my work enjoyable and much easier. When we have agenda, and I ask anyone of them if they want to do this or that, they NEVER say "NO." They even think of their own way to make everything a little bit different and much better. I'm sure that they DO KNOW WHAT they're doing and HOW TO DO it. They put themselves into the work and take it seriously. So yeah , this group is SO AWESOME !!! And for once in a while, I feel like I'm not so "not-smart" when I signed up for Wednesday at Newcomer High ... lolz

YouthCares @ Tartine

Angela's experience at Tartine:

My first impression of the bakery was wow its busy, and after spending a couple hours there I can tell why. The food is delicious and fresh, the people there are friendly and warm. I did not know that there was so much work put into making a loaf of bread, all the mixing and shaping that needs to done, but in the end you get such a great product. I think this experience really sparked an interest to open my own bakery just so i can eat all the stuff we would be selling.




Erica's experience at Tartine:

Visiting Tartine Bakery and shadowing Eric was an amazing experience. Not only did we witness the process of bread making, we learned how to check for good bread, how to flour baskets properly, and how to make yeast. To test if the bread is good, you would look at its shine on the crust, and the size of the hallow holes in the crumb (the interior of the bread). If the bread’s crust is shiny, and the holes in the crumb vary in sizes, the bread is good. The shine on the crust is the result of flouring the baskets properly. The correct way to flour the bread baskets is to flour only the sides and the middle, rather than dusting flour all over the basket. Last, we learned that the only ingredients used in Tartine’s breads are water, flour, and salt. Now, how is it possible to make bread without yeast? There are two options: use yeast, or make your own yeast. To make yeast, you would mix water and flour together, and then leave it out overnight. After a certain amount of time, the mixture would be able to be used as yeast.

Aside from learning about bread making, Eric gave us some free bread to taste. He allowed us to taste their walnut bread and sesame bread. Both were fresh, warm, and tasty. The outside was crunchy, and the inside was super soft. He also made us some olive dip for the sesame bread. Not only did we taste Tartine’s bread, we tasted their freshly made hot chocolate and cranberry tart. The hot chocolate was extremely creamy compared to the hot chocolate made from the Nestle cocoa powder. The tart was the best of the day. I believe the filling was made with sliced almonds and topped with dried cranberries. One word to describe the tart would be delicious.

PIL, thanks for a great year!

Partners in Learning @ Pier 39

To celebrate PIL's last day at Newcomer High School for the Spring 2009 semester, we had a scavenger hunt at Pier 39.

But first, we made some sandwiches for the road!