As the recipient of the 2014 Blake Award, I was able to travel for a week in March to the Eva Russell School and Orphanage in the Dominican Republic. This is a small school in Monte Plata that provides education and meals for very poor street children who cannot afford food, clothes, or the ability to attend pubic school. Every child has lost one or both of their parents and lives in a home considered primitive. The grant provided the means for me to travel with a mission team from the Tower Hill Church in Red Bank, NJ. Tower Hill became involved with the school in 1995 and has seen it grow from 30 students to almost 200 at present. During this time an orphanage was also created, which today houses and cares for 30 children.
This year, there were eight adults on the team. Five of us, including myself, focused on the 
academic component, while three addressed painting and construction needs. Our academic theme for the week was the solar system and we taught the following lessons throughout the mornings to each class.
Kindergarten and 1st Grade: I want to be an Astronaut
2nd, 3rd, and 4th : Day and Night on Earth
5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th : The Solar System
The students also built and launched bottle cap and foam rockets, which were a big hit!
During the afternoons, we worked with 5th – 8th grade students to help them complete independent research projects on a planet they had each selected. Never before had these students conducted independent research and we were all a bit nervous. We created guided outlines for the students suggesting information that should be included and questions answered and prior to our visit, resource science books in Spanish had been shipped down. The students' final reports and presentations were amazing and most importantly, they had begun to develop a skill set that would serve them well in their future.
One evening, I had the opportunity to lead a teacher workshop. Since many of the teachers had expressed concerns about their students' writing, I demonstrated lessons that would help the students connect the spoken word with the written word. The workshop was well received and during the following days I was thrilled to see many teachers successfully implementing the lessons in their own classrooms.
With the help of Ms. Bacon, an RCDS Spanish teacher, I was also able to initiate pen pals between the 5th grade students from both schools. The RCDS students spent a number of their foreign language class periods writing and editing their letters. These final products were then sealed in envelopes with lots of surprises, addressed to each pen pal, and hand delivered by me. The Eva Russell students were so excited to open their letters since most had never received a letter in his/her life. They couldn't believe all of the stickers, pencils, and tiny treasures that the RCDS students had stuffed into the envelopes. Then during the week of my visit, the Eva Russell students wrote letters in reply which I brought back to my students at RCDS.
Of course not all of time was spent in the classrooms. We had many opportunities to play with the children and enjoyed an enormous family style dinner at the orphanage one evening. On our last day, the leader of our team launched three water/air rockets with the whole school watching. You can watch the students' reaction on the following youtube link: http://youtu.be/NJG9KQo5JQc
I am so grateful to RCDS and the Blake Family for making this trip possible. It was an amazing experience that not only deeply affected me, but also my students who loved seeing all the pictures and hearing about the lives of these children. I also hope that this will inspire my students to venture out in the world beyond hotels and resorts, so that they may experience the true culture of other people and reach out when possible to lend a helping hand.