Egg Drop with Youth In Action

In class on Thursday we did an egg drop along with the youth in action students.  I remember that the first time I ever did this was in high school and we did it to help us learn about Physics. This time I am so glad that it was not to learn about Physics, but learning about the different classes in our society, such as the poor/working class and the middle/rich class.

  For this activity we were given materials by the youth in action students and my groups materials consisted of paper, rubber bands, condoms, balloons, and paper bags.  With these materials we had to create something that would protect our egg from breaking when dropped.  My group decided to put the egg in a cup covering it with a condom and other soft materials that we had and blowing up the condom to put the cup with the egg in it.  When the youth in action group came over to us and took away some of our materials, we didn’t let that discourage us because we were more than half way done and we thought our egg would sustain the fall.  To our dismay it didn’t sustain the fall and the egg broke.   After thinking about how the materials were taken away and how the groups that were inside working on their egg had more materials than the groups outside (my group) it kind of felt like we were set up to fail before we even started.

   Connecting this all back to Ullucci, I can see how most children don't know what they have until they see what someone else has.   I can see how a lot of people/children might think that they are being set up to fail in life with the lack of resources that might be given to them, but I feel like we all have the ability to really persevere over adversity.  I am sure that there are people out in our communities that have come from nothing, but because they want to make their life better they have overcame them.  I think that for everyone there is room for improvement both within an individual and the institutions around them.

        I feel as if it is wrong that some communities get resources and others don’t.  Today not everyone is going to have what someone else has and it’s really sad. I wish that all communities had the same resources because then individuals would feel more prepared for the world a head of them.  We see schools in different towns in Rhode Island that always have new textbooks and other schools that barely have enough textbooks for everyone or there are schools that have the newest technology.  Just because some schools have more that doesn’t make their students any  smarter or better off than a student whose school has less, they are just learning in a different way. People who are poor feel like there is no way out and that feeling of there being no way out is passed down from them to their kids and so on.  When people feel like there is no way out, that is when our institutions need to step in and change. They need to change in some way when it comes to there being more jobs, more school materials, and higher salaries for workers.  This would make communities feel like they are being backed up and someone is rooting for them to succeed.

    There is a quote that I have always loved and I feel like it really pertains to everything we have learned about.  It states, “Be the change you want to see in the world.”  Everyone has a special purpose that they bring to the world and every word that they say or don’t say matters.  The world is a big place, but everything that is done either by you, me, or someone else is important.

Here is an article that gives some good tips on essential skills that can be used for overcoming adversity: Essential skills