Day 2: Mulching and Coning

Nottingham High School

Hey! This is Baylie, and this morning I went to Nottingham CAJT High School with half of the ASB group. Nottingham is a school for students who have moderate to severe developmental disabilities from ages 14-21. Today, the ASB group who went to Nottingham had the opportunity to assist different classrooms by helping teach lessons and interacting with the students. I spent the day with a specific class of students as they went to four different teachers. The students that I spent the day with definitely touched my heart this morning. Right when I walked in the door and saw the students for the first time, they all got so excited to have a visitor from college. One of the students’ favorite activities was dancing to their favorite songs. So, today I got to dance to “Big Green Tractor” and “Nae Nae” with my group of students. I had a great experience today getting to meet some of the students and the extremely kind and welcoming staff of Nottingham CAJT High School. 

Happy Tuesday, everyone! This is Chris, and for the first half of the day I went with our half of the group to Busch Middle School of Character. We happened to arrive on Primary Day here in Missouri, I was paired with Elisabeth the as we followed the same class cluster of students through many of the day’s subjects. One of the highlights of the day was being able to observe the 8th Grade’s straw poll—our teacher explained to his class the procedure that was used in their state, and allowed students to use a sample ballot to select the candidates that they wanted—as if it was the classroom was a real precinct. Another was our ability to tutor and assist students in a math class. When I walked over to a student to help them out with a problem, it was an extremely rewarding feeling to see that light bulb go off in their head once they were pointed in the right direction. Busch’s 8th grade math teacher was coincidentally taught by a Tennessee alum (Go Vols!) and I had a chance to ask him about his journey from Rocky Top to St. Louis. As an aspiring teacher, it was inspiring to ask him about how he has spent the last two years connecting with the community here and his students at Busch.

The both of us along with the rest of our group gathered together again at Nottingham for lunch in the cafeteria with the students that we had met in the past few days. It was nice to meet up with the students again and connect with them one more time. We left at around 12 to go back to the YMCA to finish the projects that we worked on the previous day. We continued our work on the garden and mulching the playground for the YMCA. It was nice to see the progress of our service on their campus. After spending a few hours on our projects, we realized that Dairy Queen was having their yearly free cone day. YAY. We decided to stop by for a delicious treat before coming back to home-base for dinner. It was such a great day in St. Louis. Check back in tomorrow for the continuation of our adventures. 

Busch Middle School of Character