Below are some of the items, donated by many of our generous community members and businesses, which you can bid on at the Breakthrough Showcase event on November 15th. All funds raised will go to support Breakthrough Norcross and its partner organizations.
Click here to see more about the event.
Join us at the College Football Hall of Fame on December 4, 2014
to celebrate the life and legacy of the late Jack Kemp.
Breakthrough Norcross, after nearly two years of working toward establishing a collective impact project to improve educational outcomes for Norcross students, partnered with Beaver Ridge Elementary to offer a Robotics camp for their rising fourth and fifth graders. Students who are interested in the subject of Robotics were able to sign up for a weeklong day camp over the summer, and, as a part of my summer internship with Georgia Center for Opportunity, I had the opportunity to check out what was going on at the Robotics Camp – dubbed Beaver Bots – last Thursday.
Environmentally, the robotics room is a collection of the parts, programs, and challenges for the robots that would be the primary tool of the weeklong camp. Two teachers facilitate the camp for approximately 30 students, who all spend most of their time in the robotics room. The Mindstorms, as the machines are officially named, are designed by Lego with the capacity to carry out a series of complex tasks. Various challenge courses are then set up in order to test the robots and their human operator through a diverse array of task completion.
The teachers lead each of the kids through the tasks at a very basic level that eventually handed over full reign of the robots and their programming to the kids. In fact, the teachers made it their mission to equip and not baby their students, and the kids loved it. The kids would cheer each other on through their successes and encourage each other through their missteps. Both boys and girls were learning to wrestle with the complex tasks assigned to them, and this development of perseverance – or grit as some call it – served as the crux for success in future tasks for the club.
One of the students was so excited about her experience there that she couldn’t help but exclaim how much she loved working with her friends and other students. She remarked that it wasn’t about winning or losing, although that was a component of the camp; but it was about trying your hardest and having fun with friends.
Of course, there were winners and losers, but the winners encouraged the losers, and the losers cheered on the winners; and everyone was having fun. Furthermore, and most significantly, the kids were not criticizing each other for their initial shortcomings on the challenge field. In fact, they outright refused to submit to failure, consistently returning to the drawing board until they found success.
Kids are playing with robots, encouraging each other, and carving a pathway into higher learning. It sounds utopic and in some regards it really is. It’s the start of something great, albeit unfinished. It’s just one small part of a larger story that’s unfolding through Breakthrough Norcross, and I have a feeling that the best is yet to come.
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This blog was written by Patrick DeMartino. Patrick is pursuing a B.S. in Psychology from the University of Georgia. This is his second summer interning with GCO working to support our Solution Delivery work.
It seems like only days ago I was holding my 18-year old daughter Blair as an infant, and my mother said, “It will go by so fast.” I couldn’t have imagined how right she was. It is unbelievable to me that Blair is about to graduate from high school and go off to college. The memories of being a mother in those early days are so sweet. It was a precious time. And all of the memories since then, good and bad, will always mean so much to me.
As I look back over the years of raising Blair and her sister Anna, the memories sometimes all run together as one large mosaic. There are so many little things that happened along the way that I just can’t remember, but wish I could. Some days I would do almost anything to have their sweet little pre-school faces back to kiss, just one more time. They were both so smiley, giggly and sweet. I did all I could to keep them as happy as possible. I wanted their lives to be filled with singing, laughing, hugging, and as little crying as possible.
Time moved on and began to speed up. Days, weeks and years were filled with school, dance, piano, cheerleading, gymnastics, voice lessons, church choir, doctor visits, dentist visits, more dance, and then, even more dance. There was driving, lots and lots of driving…so much driving. All along the way there were opportunities to teach them how to be the beautiful, intelligent, responsible young women that they are today. I took a lot of those opportunities, but lost a lot as well, probably because I was just plain tired. Fortunately, they had many other people in their lives to pick up the slack.
The teenage years began, and so did the tension. This is when instinct no longer did the trick. This is when many of the parenting mistakes occurred. This is when I screwed up a lot. This is when they realized I wasn’t so perfect, and sometimes even hated me. This is when I sometimes hated myself. This is when I found out what I was made of. This is when I learned what it really means to be a mother.
Now that they are 18 and 16, one leaving us soon, the other a new driver, I think about how this stage of my life is quickly coming to an end. They soon will both be off doing wonderful and exciting things. And, although it often hurts to think of them leaving, I know that I have done my job well and that they will be successful, and I pray, happy adults. What I have learned from this motherhood experience is that being a good mother requires you to accept your imperfections and admit to your mistakes, but also to enjoy the end product, your children, and know that YOU did it. Take the credit. Be proud of yourself, and be happy that you have invested yourself as a mother. I know I am.
Given two rounds of severe winter weather and the rush to early primary elections, the 2013-2014 session of the Georgia General Assembly seemed to fly by. In case you were unable to keep up with the session, this edition of the Capitol Update offers a summary of some of the important legislation that survived to see the Governor’s desk, and some that did not.Legislative Recap
Bills sent to the Governor:
Bills that Failed:
_____________________________________________________________________________ Thanks to Eric Cochling, our VP of Policy Advancement, Jamie Lord, our director of government affairs, and Jacob Stubbs, our legislative intern and John Jay Fellowship alumnus for their able contributions to this update.
This week GCO’s Eric Cochling spoke at a “2014 Legislative Roundup” event hosted by the Georgia Public Policy Foundation, their summary is included below:
Good enough on some levels but not good enough across-the-board.
That was their analysis of the 2014 General Assembly from Eric Cochling and Kyle Wingfield at our sold-out policy breakfast on Wednesday, March 26. Cochling is vice president of public policy at the Georgia Center for Opportunity and Wingfield is the conservative voice on The Atlanta Journal-Constitution editorial pages.
“You saw a lot of excitement about certain ideas whether it was welfare reform or new school choice concepts coming through that made it through a chamber with vast majorities voting in favor of it but then it goes on to die in the other chamber,” Cochling said. “I would characterize the session as some positive things happened but many missed opportunities for a truly conservative policy movement forward.”
“Thirty-seven constitutional amendments were introduced and two will be on the ballot this fall,” Wingfield said. “Several would have been very good and would represent great progress for Georgia. They are not going to be there and the prospects of getting them on the ballot I would argue will only get worse in future years.”
Issues discussed in this YouTube video include criminal justice reform, federal balanced budget constitutional amendment initiatives, child welfare and foster care, transportation investment, tax credit scholarships and school choice, state income tax and pension reform, and Medicaid expansion and improved access to health care for all Georgians.
This content is courtesy of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation, and can be seen in its original form HERE.
